All Susanna Kaysen Quotes
- A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind. Both
- ... now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there. Crazy
- 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… All
- It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying,… Alongside
- 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… Disease
- An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy. Busy
- A thought is a hard thing to control. Control
- 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.… Cake
- 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… Assumed
- Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two. Communication
- It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there's a… Achieve
- Freedom was the price of privacy. Freedom
- Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone. Alone
- Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates. Classmates
- Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco. Alcatraz
- 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… Driven
- 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… Both
- Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons… Animates
- I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Debate
- The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the… All
- 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… Debate
- I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor. Cream
- It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. All
- Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer… Busy
- 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,… Alone