Jeffrey Eugenides

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them.

I use computers and the Internet every day of my life, and yet I have absolutely no idea how they work. I'm like a labrador watching 'The Matrix.'

I'm sensitive and get easily upset and insulted.

The process of writing has always started for me when I put myself in a place where no one distracts me.