Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.

I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes