Susanna Kaysen Quotes

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? ~ Susanna Kaysen

It's a mean world," she'd say. She was usually glad enough to be back. "There's nobody to take care of you out there. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Just to get through life was no ambition. It was the opposite of ambition. ~ Susanna Kaysen

And 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, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it. ~ Susanna Kaysen

It never stopped, even at night, it was our lullaby. It was our metronome, our pulse. It was our lives measured out in doses slightly larger than those famous coffee spoons. Soup spoons, maybe? Dented tin spoons brimming with what should have been sweet but was sour, gone off, gone by without our savouring it: our lives ~ Susanna Kaysen

That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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? ~ Susanna Kaysen

Reality was getting too dense. ~ Susanna Kaysen

It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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 ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have. ~ Susanna Kaysen

What does the sign say?" " 'If you lived here, you'd be home now.' " She clenched her hands with excitement. "See, every day people will drive past and read that sign and think, 'Yeah, if I lived here I'd be home now,' and I will be home. Motherfuckers. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Asa's smell (the fragrance of a beautiful man) is what I miss the most.
[…]
Like a virus his smell entered me and changed my cells,
slowly, over years, until they craved only that smell, which was their oxygen. ~ Susanna Kaysen

It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of
warm earth. Suicide weather. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I always got irritated when he told me he wasn't a doctor. Technically, he was a doctor. Being a doctor is like being a Jew; you can't get away from it. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I'm Ambivalent. In fact that's my new favorite word.
Do you know what it means ?
I don't care. ~ Susanna Kaysen

The group had an atomic structure: a nucleus of nuts surrounded by darting, nervous nurse-electrons charged with our protection. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ~ Susanna Kaysen

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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,Interrupted ~ Susanna Kaysen

I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. I still think about it. I'll always have to think about it. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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? ~ Susanna Kaysen

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 the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way. ~ Susanna Kaysen

The world didn't stop because we weren't in it anymore. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Translation: I need to know the particulars of craziness so I can assure myself that I'm not crazy. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I noticed that some of my deadness was being replaced by an intense feeling about the Greek stories and the Bible stories. They were similar. There was something naked about these stories. Terrible things happened, and then some more terrible things. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapses ~ Susanna Kaysen

We might get out sometime, but she was locked up forever in that body. ~ Susanna Kaysen

What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad? ~ Susanna Kaysen

She rushed out, because the darkness in the theater was too much when combined with the darkness in her head . ~ Susanna Kaysen

...most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them... ~ Susanna Kaysen

Back then I didn't know that I­­or anyone­­could make a life out of boyfriends and literature. As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have. The result was chronic emptiness and boredom. There were more pernicious results as well: self­loathing, alternating with "inappropriately intense anger with frequent displays of temper... ~ Susanna Kaysen

Imagined my character as a plate or shirt that had been manufactured incorrectly and was therefore useless. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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 data, the other needs an overview; they influence each other. They get dialogues going.

INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.
INTERPRETER TWO: I believe that's because the shoe is too tight.
INTERPRETER ONE: Checked that. Took off the shoe. Foot still hurts.
INTERPRETER TWO: Did you look at it?
INTERPRETER ONE: Looking. It's red.
INTERPRETER TWO: No blood?
INTERPRETER ONE: Nope.
INTERPRETER TWO: Forget about it.
INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.

An exemplary piece of confusion.

INTERPRETER ONE: There's a tiger in the corner.
INTERPRETER TWO: No, that's not a tiger- that's a bureau.
INTERPRETER ONE: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!
INTERPRETER TWO: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it.

Then all the dendrites and neurons and serotonin levels and interpreters collect themselves and trot over to the corner.
If you are not crazy, the second inte ~ Susanna Kaysen

Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons that 'animates' us. ~ Susanna Kaysen

With wild eyes that had seen freedom. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions they raise.
Don't ask me those questions! Don't ask me what life means or how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I can honestly say that my misery had been transformed into common unhappiness, so by Freud's definition I have achieved mental health. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why. Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates. I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ~ Susanna Kaysen

You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Now, I would say to myself, you are feeling alienated from people and unlike other people, therefore you are projecting your discomfort onto them. When you look at a face, you see a blob of rubber because you are worried that your face is a blob of rubber.
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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

This was what was wonderful, standing alone in the big, soft night rewriting the past to make myself miss what had never been. Now that it was over, I could turn the past into anything I wanted. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates. ~ Susanna Kaysen

They were all seventeen and miserable, just like me. They didn't have time to wonder why I was a little more miserable than most. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast. ~ Susanna Kaysen

But the fact that I couldn't hold my job was worrisome. I was probably crazy. I'd been skirting the idea of craziness for a year or two, now I was closing in on it.
Pull yourself together! I told myself. Stop indulging yourself. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just wayward. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Their love story unfolded and then folded up again in Cambridge, as I watched and took mental notes and learned nothing, naturally, because the heart is unteachable. ~ Susanna Kaysen

My father was judgmental and kind of mean, and I'm like that. And he was very perfectionistic, and I'm like that. And he was very hard on himself, and I'm like that. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Thus, our keepers. As for finders - well, we had to be our own finders. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry. ~ Susanna Kaysen

When digital watches were invented years later they reminded me of five-minute checks. They murdered time in the same way -slowly- chopping off pieces of it and lobbing them into the dustbin with a little click to let you know time was gone. Click, swish, "Checks," swish, click: another five minutes of life down the drain. And spent in this place. ~ Susanna Kaysen

It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace. ~ Susanna Kaysen

GoodReads: Do people still ask you about your mental health?

Susanna Kaysen: Well, they used to a lot. "Are you still crazy?" was how people put it. And I would say, "Yes, but I'm older, so I'm more used to it." It's familiar. You've been there, you've done that, and it's gone away. I think the fact that you can feel like it's the end of the world and you're going to kill yourself and yet there's some part of you that says "this has happened before." And by the time you get to the point where you can say "this has happened 137 times before," it's better than saying "this has happened four times before." So as you get older, there's a little ironist or cynic or somebody inside you who says, "Yeah, uh-huh. Right, OK, I've heard that, I've heard that. ~ Susanna Kaysen

How the fuck else am I going to get any attention in this place?
Lisa always called the hospital 'this place. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label "compulsively promiscuous"? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That sounds more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess
if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing.
And for seventeen-year-old girls, how many boys? ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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 moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

She lit the match. ~ Susanna Kaysen

You can see why doubting one's own craziness is
considered a good sign: It's a sort of flailing response by
the second interpreter. What's happening? the second
interpreter is saying. He tells me it's a tiger but I'm not
convinced; maybe there's something wrong with me.
Enough doubt is in there to give "reality" a toehold. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

The meat was bruised, bleeding, and imprisoned in a tight wrapping. And, though I had a six-month respite from thinking about it, so was I. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Recovered. Had my personality crossed over that border, whatever and wherever it was, to resume life within the confines of normal? Had I stopped arguing with my personality and learned to straddle the line between sane and insane? ~ Susanna Kaysen

Not everything has a happy ending, and not everything has an ending. Some things just kind of dribble away or cut off abruptly. ~ Susanna Kaysen

When you're sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I walked past the lady in yellow robes and the maid bringing her a letter, past the soldier with a magnificent hat and the girl smiling at him, thinking of warm lips, brown eyes, blue eyes. Her brown eyes stopped me.
It's the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair. The light is muted, winter light, but her face is bright.
I looked into her brown eyes and I recoiled. She was warning me of something-- she had looked up from her work to warn me. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath in order to say to me, "Don't!"
I moved backward, trying to get beyond the range of her urgency. But her urgency filled the corridor. "Wait," she was saying, "wait! Don't go!"

...

She had changed a lot in sixteen years. She was no longer urgent. In fact, she was sad. She was young and distracted, and her teacher was bearing down on her, trying to get her to pay attention. But she was looking out, looking for someone who would see her.
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?
I had something to tell her now "I see you," ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

This behavior may ... counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl,Interrupted ~ Susanna Kaysen

Can I try the dryler?"

"No. No." Eyvinder grabbed it and held it to his breast. "Jonathan, I must make a confession." He grinned. "This is really a stone I painted to resemble a dryler. It's very good, no? I have done a beautiful job making it into a dryler. I wanted to give you a full Faroese meal in all its typicality, Anna and I both wanted this. But Anna cannot make dryler. Nobody can make them anymore. We've forgotten how, because they are so stinking bad to eat. They are just like rocks to eat. So, I decided,why not take a rock and make it into a dryler? It's conceptive art, isn't it?"

"Conceptual," said Jonathan ~ Susanna Kaysen

I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Something had been peeled back, a covering or shell that works to protect us. I couldn't decide whether the covering was something on me or something attached to every thing in the world. It didn't matter, really; wherever it had been, it wasn't there anymore. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I don't have a whole bunch of literary connections. I don't write reviews or attend writer's conferences. I'm kind of shy and don't want to go to a party. I just want to stay home and read my murder mysteries and try to write and cook dinner. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Don't ask me those questions! Don't ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don't talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. I don't want to hear about the tiger in the corner or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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. ~ Susanna Kaysen

What does borderline personality mean, anyhow? It appears to be a way station between neurosis and psychosis: a fractured but not disassembled psyche. Though to quote my post-Melvin psychiatrist: "It's what they call people whose lifestyles bother them. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Then he heard the hum. Vibrating in consonance with one of the tones of the ocean's churning, it slid in and out of perceptibility in the way that the landscape disappeared in the mist. But by stilling his breath and, to some degree, his jumping pulse, Jonathan was able to pick it out, the low continuo in the cantata of sea and wind. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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 ~ Susanna Kaysen

Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And so does velocity.In contrast to viscosity's cellular coma, velocity endows every platelet and muscle fiber with a mind of its own, a means of knowing and commenting on its own behavior. There is too much perception, and beyond the plethora of perceptions, a plethora of thoughts about the perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions. Digestion could kill you! What I mean is the unceasing awareness of the processes of digestion could exhaust you to death. And digestion is just an involuntary sideline to thinking, which is where the real trouble begins ~ Susanna Kaysen

My friends have hated Asa, first for monopolizing my mind, then for the endless discussions of him they were subjected to, finally, for making me unhappy. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment. ~ Susanna Clarke

I basically taught myself how to sing and play by copying records, and that's just how it was for me. I know that's true for a lot of budding musicians out there - that's the thing that gets them inspired, is trying to learn their favorite songs. I think it's a great way to teach yourself. ~ Susanna Hoffs

As a young singer, you have to get experience somehow, to try things out and grow as a singer. They way you do that is by going through the ranks and singing at companies like Opera Birmingham. It's a perfect place to foster a career. ~ Susanna Phillips