504 Quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.

We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it—that makes no sense. What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.

During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.

Virgin suicideWhat was that she cried?No use in stayin'On this holocaust rideShe gave me her cherryShe's my virgin suicide

When we asked him to sum up his impression of the girls' emotional state at that point, he said, "Buffeted but not broken.

He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.

Her suicide, from this perspective, was seen as a kind of disease infecting those close at hand. In the bathtub, cooking in the broth of her own blood, Cecilia had released an aiborne virus which the other girls, even in coming to save her, had contracted.

They had killed themselves over the failure to find a love that none of us could ever be.

Cecilia had unleashed her blood in the bath, Amy Schraff said, because the ancient Romans had done that when life became unbearable, and she thought when Dominic heard about it, on the highway, amid the cactus, he would realize that it was she who loved him.