#suicides

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[...]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards “Them” (i.e., anyone who is not one of “Us”) is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#mass-suicides #psychopathology #religious-science-fiction #sects #sociology

Virgin suicide What was that she cried? No use in stayin' On this holocaust ride She gave me her cherry She's my virgin suicide ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#lyrics #music #sex #suicide #the-virgin-suicides

I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly. ↗

— Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

#baghdad #commit #encourage #i #i am

I think the suicides in my first book came from the idea of growing up in Detroit. If you grow up in a city like that you feel everything is perishing, evanescent and going away very quickly. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#book #came #city #detroit #evanescent

For many centuries, suicides were treated like criminals by the society. That is part of the terrible legacy that has come down into society's method of handling suicide recovery. Now we have to fight off the demons that have been hanging around suicide for centuries. ↗

— Judy Collins

#been #centuries #come #criminals #demons

When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#about #been #found #gave #had

There have been a lot of murders and suicides in my family; it's like the primary cause of death. I wonder if there's a certain energy that attracts that. ↗

— Rose McGowan

#been #cause #certain #death #energy

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. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#the-virgin-suicides #death

We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#virgin-suicides #imagination

Even our parents seemed agree more and more with the television version of things, listening to the reporters' inanities as though they could tell us the truth about our own lives ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#philosophical #the-virgin-suicides #life