How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[Cecilia] sat on a barstool, staring into her punch glass, and the shapeless bag of a dress fell over her. She had colored her lips with a red crayon, which gave her face a deranged harlot look, but she acted as though no one were there.
We knew to stay away from her. (1.41-42)
Even in the middle of a party, Cecilia finds herself isolated from the rest of the group. She's different, and it shows in her posture, her strange makeup, and her behavior. She gives off a vibe that people should keep away, and they do. She's feeling isolated even in the middle of a party. Her sense of feeling different isolates her.
Quote #2
As the diary progresses, Cecilia begins to recede from her sisters and, in fact, from personal narrative of any kind. The first person singular ceases almost entirely, the effect akin to a camera's pulling away from the characters at the end of a movie, to show, in a series of dissolves, their house, street, city, country, and finally planet, which not only dwarfs but obliterates them. (2.18)
In her own writing, Cecilia seems to be isolated from herself. She loses her sense of identity as she loses her narrative "I". She seems to want to fade out of the world, where she already feels isolated. Definitely a warning sign of depression. Psychologists call this "decathexis": taking all the emotional energy you usually invest in the world and other people and pulling it back. You just don't care anymore.
Quote #3
We never learned whether Mrs. Lisbon caught Lux as she tried to sneak back inside, but for whatever reason, when Trip tried to make another date to come sit on the couch, Lux told him she was grounded, and that her mother had forbidden any future visits. (3.59)
After Trip visits Lux at her home, she sneaks into his car and they have a wild sexual encounter. Even if Mrs. Lisbon doesn't catch Lux in the act, she seems to have a sixth-sense about it and attempts to keep Lux from more of the same by isolating the girls, refusing all visitors. Lux's behavior just served to validate Mrs. Lisbon's fears about the world outside the family. She sees isolation as safety.
Quote #4
Other than to school or church the Lisbon girls never went anywhere. Once a week a Kroger's truck delivered groceries. (3.62)
Not only does Mrs. Lisbon isolate the girls, she does it to herself, even having the groceries delivered. Is she avoiding having to see people and the pity in their eyes about Cecilia? Does she think the girls will run wild if she leaves the house? Is she just too depressed to go out? This is our first sign that Mrs. Lisbon is losing it. Eventually, even the grocery deliveries stop.
Quote #5
Day by day, the girls ostracized themselves. Because they stayed in a group, other girls found it difficult to talk or walk with them, and many assumed they wanted to be left alone. And the more the Lisbon girls were left alone, the more they retreated. (3.79)
Even when they do go to school, the girls continue the isolation they experience at home, keeping to themselves. As often happens, the rest of the girls don't know how to handle the fact that Cecilia's killed herself. They'd rather say nothing than say the wrong thing, leaving the Lisbon sisters to cope on their own. They assume the girls want to be left alone together, but that might be their own fears talking.
Quote #6
"It hit me in the pit of my stomach that those girls weren't going on any more dates," Kevin Head told us years later. "The old b**** had locked them up again. Don't ask me how I knew. I just did." The window shades had closed like eyelids and the shaggy flower beds made the house look abandoned. (3.224)
Here the narrators interview a friend to find out more about what was happening with the girls, what it must have seemed like from the outside. Kevin Head was one of the lucky guys who got to take the sisters to Homecoming, and his description of their dear mum lets us know exactly what he thinks about the whole situation. The house itself looks all closed up and isolated.
Quote #7
A few weeks after Mrs. Lisbon shut the house in maximum-security isolation, the sightings of Lux making love on the roof began. (4.1)
Every prison has a black market, even Mrs. Lisbon's Home for Suicidal Sisters. Lux manages to find some way to signal to randos to come visit her and takes them up onto the roof for some loving. It's a very public place; all the neighbors knew about it, but her jailers, her parents, have no idea. But Lux is still emotionally isolated; all her lovers comment how remote she seemed during sex.
Quote #8
Following the Homecoming dance, Mrs. Lisbon closed the downstairs shades. All we could see were the girls' incarcerated shadows, which ran riot in our imaginations. (4.2)
The use of the adjective "incarcerated" to talk about the girls compares their home to a prison, which is what it must seem like to them as young people trapped in the house. In fact, the narrators call the girls incarcerated "shadows" as if they were no longer real people to the rest of the world. They're total unknowns now.
Quote #9
The house receded behind its mists of youth being choked off, and even our own parents began to mention how dim and unhealthy the place looked. (4.9)
As the girls dig in at home, even the house begins to look depressed—unhealthy, neglecting its appearance. "Youth choked off" is a powerful description; it seems to foreshadow the girls' death.
Quote #10
"Why all the commotion? Why the ambulance?"
"Only way I could get out of the house." (4.25-4.26)
Lux complains of a stomachache and is taken to the hospital for a burst appendix. It turns out she's worried that she's pregnant and wants to get to the hospital for a test. Her mother won't let her out of the house so she has to fake an emergency to get out of her house and get help. If an ambulance ride is the highlight of your week, things are pretty bad indeed.
Quote #11
Now the soft decay of the house began to show up more clearly. We noticed how tattered the curtains had become, then realized we weren't looking at curtains at all but at a film of dirt, with spy holes wiped clean. The best thing was to see them make one: the pink heel of a hand flattening against the glass, then rubbing back and forth to uncover the bright mosaic of an eye, looking out at us. (4.55)
This description, along with the one of Therese's sad conversation on the ham radio, is really a killer. The girls' isolation is complete; all they can do is peek out at the world and know they're not part of it anymore. It's a sad, hopeless scene.