Susanna Kaysen
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.Collection: Wind
It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality.Collection: Reality
Which is worse, overload or underload? Luckily, I never had to choose. One or Pass on to where? Back into my cells to lurk like a virus waiting for the next opportunity? Out into the ether of the world to wait for the circumstances that would provoke its reappearance? Endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture - it's the great mystery of mental illness.Collection: Opportunity
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.Collection: Writing
A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.Collection: Suicide
The girl at her music sits in another sort of light,the fitful,overcast light of lie,by which we see ourselves and others only imprefectly, and seldom..-Girl,InterruptedCollection: Girl
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 InterruptedCollection: Girl
The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. The floor meant yes, no, this, that, up, down, day, night -all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor.Collection: Black And White
You could also "request" to be locked into the seclusion room. Not many people made that request. You had to "request" to get out too. A nurse would look through the chicken wire and decide if you were ready to come out. Somewhat like looking at a cake through the glass of the oven door.Collection: Glasses
But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.Collection: Suicide
Disease [is] as one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.Collection: Doctors
I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor.Collection: Ice Cream
This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled.Collection: People
Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us.Collection: Character
And this was the main precondition, that anything might be something else. Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range?Collection: Thinking
Freedom was the price of privacy.Collection: Privacy
Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast. I'm not talking about onset or duration. I mean the quality of the insanity, the day-to-day business of being nuts.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Crazy
All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.Collection: Integrity
This behavior may...counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl,InterruptedCollection: Girl
If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella.Collection: Jobs
Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates.Collection: Teacher
By the time we hit the streets they were silent and closed in on us, and they had assumed the Nonchalant Look, an expression that said, I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor. But they were, and we were their six lunatics, so we behaved like lunatics.Collection: Ice Cream
It's a fairly accurate portrait of me at eighteen, minus a few quirks like reckless driving and eating binges. It's accurate but it isn't profound.Collection: Profound
Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back... Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our minds...Collection: Growing Up
What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?Collection: Mad
I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.Collection: My Future
And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.Collection: Purpose
Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry.Collection: Dancing
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.Collection: Girl
I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapsesCollection: Mind
Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse.Collection: Nurse
This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?Collection: Girl
Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.Collection: Girl Interrupted