"emotions, in my experience, arn't covered by single words. i don't believe in "sadness", "joy", or "regret". maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. i'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, germanic traincar constructions like, say "the happiness that attends disaster." or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." i'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on my aging family" connects with "the excitment of getting a room with a mini-bar." i've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that i've entered my story, i need them more than ever. ..from here on in, everything i'll tell you is coloured by the subjective experience of being part of events. here's where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. already the world feels heavier, now i'm a part of it..."

"biology gives you a brain. life turns it into a mind"

eugenides had better be writing anothe book now. he is such a good storyteller - there now, 'good' is so understated but any other word would complicate it. he's simply good. it's all dreamy, theatrical, simple, profound, curiousity-inducing, and frightful all at once. now i want to go to detroit, and to greece. a good book makes me want to go to the described destinations - san diego lured by 'the thrills' and russia - coerced by dotoevsky. maybe i'm in the cathartic realm now. i'm flying in my brains now. sleep tonight will be tinged with ismene tearing her hair out for antigone smoking weed in 60s bellbottoms singing john lennon songs remembering the secret culture of being a greek in asia minor. see, the greeks have their parthenon, the romans have their colosseum, the chinese have their paper-inventing ancestors buried in the great wall and etc etc etc. how magnificent and overwhelming to be along the line of such greatness, such agedness, such history. it's like royalty somewhat; it's in the very blood of them all. being singaporean, i have none of this earthly bond that links me back to such cultural seepage.

anyway, really, 'middlesex' is fantastic reading. it killed me really.