The Virgin Suicides

by Jeffrey Eugenides

We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were.

We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.