Mr. Lisbon

We saw them through the toll they exacted on him: his puffy red eyes that hardly opened anymore to see his daughters wasting away; his shoes scuffed from climbing stairs forever threatening to lead to another inert body; 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.

- Jeffrey Eugenides, The virgin suicides.