The Virgin Suicides

Obviously, Doctor,” she said, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”

What are you doing

here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets."

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.

"Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl."

She didn't say a word, but when they parted her hands they found the laminated picture of the Virgin Mary she held against her budding chest

She didn't say a word, but when they parted her hands they found the laminated picture of the Virgin Mary she held against her budding chest.

“Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.”

his sallow complexion dying in sympathy with them; and his lost look of a man who realized that all this dying was going to be the only life he ever had

It occurred to us that she and the girls read secret signs of misery in cloud formations, that despite the discrepancy in their ages something timeless communicated itself between them, as though she were advising the girls in her mumbling Greek, "Don't waste your time on life."

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.