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68e3458
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Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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ea54297
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Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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0958e2b
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I told her once I wasn't good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.
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susanna-kaysen
talent
survival
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Susanna Kaysen |
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e185533
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Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this mome..
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suicide
failed-attempt
match
gun
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Susanna Kaysen |
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71ad0e3
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Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is... Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends.
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madness
friendship
insanity
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Susanna Kaysen |
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4facfa6
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Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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bd6cafd
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Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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993adfe
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Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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a5430ff
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Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?
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Susanna Kaysen |
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727865d
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When you're sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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63548f6
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Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family's mental health.
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family
mental-health
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Susanna Kaysen |
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a5f49ed
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As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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c5e7efb
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Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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db9fa27
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Suicide is a form of murder-- premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind. It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the ..
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memoir
mental-illness
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Susanna Kaysen |
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16b2c72
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With wild eyes that had seen freedom.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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d113af6
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I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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9b6e104
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Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.
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inspirational
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Susanna Kaysen |
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f371922
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Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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ddd5779
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When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep. When I was supposed to sleep, I was silent. When a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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59e87a3
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Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?
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sanity
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Susanna Kaysen |
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e7843a3
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The point is, the brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself changes its perceptions. To make a new version of the not-entirely-false model, imagine the first interpreter as a foreign correspondent, reporting from the world. The world in this case means everything out- or inside our bodies, including serotonin levels in the brain. The second interpreter is a news analyst, who writes op-ed pieces. They read each other's work. One needs ..
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Susanna Kaysen |
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49db889
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We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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bd32d98
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Tell me that you don't take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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06a37dd
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There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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5bb9cd7
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Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?
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Susanna Kaysen |
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bd08952
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My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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e080028
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In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves
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Susanna Kaysen |
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4b2476d
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It's a long way from not having enough serotonin to thinking the world is "stale, flat and unprofitable"; even further to writing a play about a man driven by that thought. "
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Susanna Kaysen |
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0cf80ee
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I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that it was my task to swallow fifty asprin.It was my task:my job for the day.-17 Girl Interrupted
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Susanna Kaysen |
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f2f5885
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Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put..
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Susanna Kaysen |
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ed2ab37
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The world didn't stop because we weren't in it anymore.
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reality
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Susanna Kaysen |
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28102b9
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It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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2d47b00
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Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of
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Susanna Kaysen |
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9b469bd
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I can honestly say that my misery had been transformed into common unhappiness, so by Freud's definition I have achieved mental health.
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sigmund-freud
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Susanna Kaysen |
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21fd0c5
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What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?
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Susanna Kaysen |
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b83b117
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Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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e33295a
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People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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586a419
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In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces, flowers.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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4bb34b0
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Are you crazy? It's a common phrase, I know. But it means something particular to me: the tunnels, the security screens, the plastic forks, the shimmering, ever-shifting borderline that like all boundaries beckons and asks to be crossed. I do not want to cross it again.
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girl-interrupted
insanity
mental-illness
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Susanna Kaysen |
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779cde3
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My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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fc3bf01
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I think many people ill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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f7bc922
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This behavior may...counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl,Interrupted
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Susanna Kaysen |
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526594a
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Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.
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Susanna Kaysen |
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4bd9149
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Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back... Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our mind.
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Susanna Kaysen |