Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn't like that. It's a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes, it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month or a year. So don't fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don't be surprised when it leaves either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it.

Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a luster which is easily effaced, but never returns.

Love is transient even on a very personal level. We lose everyone that we love. Sometimes we drift apart and sometimes we die.

Love is like a flower, even the most beautiful kind dies.

There is something inexpressibly charming in falling in love and, surely, the whole pleasure lies in the fact that love isn't lasting.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.

Love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal.

Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?

Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

The perishable nature of love is what gives love its profound importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

Why, Robert Singh often wondered, did we give our hearts to friends whose life spans are so much shorter than our own?

Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after noon, is night.

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,-- Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?

That you are not already golden word in our streets Already memories Your love fades Already Whether you are no longer to have perished.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long

Summer romances cometo an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.