"If I who was previously revolting am now this far from my crazy self, how much farther are you who were never revolting, and how much deeper is your revulsion?"
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"‘It’s the psyche!’ I said. I was excited. ‘See, the station wagon is your ego, sturdy and reliable, and the sedan is the super ego, because it’s how you want to present yourself, powerful and impressive, and the sports car is the id—it’s the id because it’s irresponsible and fast and danerous and maybe a little forbidden.’ I smiled at him. ‘It’s new, isn’t it? The sports car?’
This time he didn’t nod."
This time he didn’t nod."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"Of course I was sad and puzzled. I was eighteen, it was spring, and I was behind bars."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"‘It’ll be okay, won’t it?’ I asked. My voice was far away from me and I hadn’t said what I meant. What I meant was that now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"We looked at him, a tiny dark man in chains on our TV screen with the one thing we would always lack: credibility."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"When they finished their rotation, all they took with them was improved versions of us, halfway between our miserable selves and the normality we saw embodied in them.
For some of us, this was the closest we would ever come to a cure.
As soon as they left, things went quickly back to worse than usual, and the real nurses had their hands full.
Thus, our keepers. As for finders—well, we had to be our own finders."
For some of us, this was the closest we would ever come to a cure.
As soon as they left, things went quickly back to worse than usual, and the real nurses had their hands full.
Thus, our keepers. As for finders—well, we had to be our own finders."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"Mainly though, it was because when we looked at the student nurses, we saw alternate versions of ourselves. They were living out the lives we might have been living, if we hadn’t been occupied with being mental patients. They shared apartments and had boyfriends and talked about clothes. We wanted to protect them so they could go on living these lives. They were out proxies."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"‘Oh, that Tiffany! Sticks to me like a barnacle,’ the nurses would complain. Then we got the chance to say, ‘Sucks, doesn’t it? Being followed around all the time.’ The nurses have to grant us this point."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"Endogenus or exogenus, nature or nature—it’s the great mystery of mental illness."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"Our hospital was famous and had 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, Girl, Interrupted.
"My ambition was to negate. The world, whether dense or hollow, provoked only my negations. When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep; when I was supposed to speak, I was silent; when a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"When I looked at someone’s face, I often did not maintain an unbroken connection to the concept of a face. Once you start parsing a face, it’s a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"The meat was bruised, bleeding, and imprisonment in a tight wrapping. And, though I had a six-month respite from thinking about it, so was I."
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
"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, Girl, Interrupted.
