Susanna Kaysen Quotes - Page 2

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

  Susanna Kaysen

  Sad, Suicide, Thinking

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.36, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Velocity, Life Is, Busy

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.77, Vintage

  29 Copy quote

• 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. Disease is 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.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Character, Doctors, Perception

  Susanna Kaysen (2001). “The Camera My Mother Gave Me”, p.126, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• 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 debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark--why not kill myself? Missed the bus--better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie--maybe I shouldn't kill myself.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Stupid, Thinking, People

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Clothes, Light

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.168, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

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

  Susanna Kaysen

  Able, Reason, Smoke

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.133, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Sleep, Silent, Pleasure

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Singers, Madness, Poet

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.48, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Running, Flower, Law

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.6, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Ambition, Expectations, Achievement

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.165, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• ... now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Depression, Crazy, Safe

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.104, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Greek, Feelings, Naked

  12 Copy quote

• Being crasy doesn't mean to be broken...It is you and me amplified", Girl, Interrupted

  Susanna Kaysen

  Girl, Mean, Broken

  4 Copy quote

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

  Susanna Kaysen

  Communication, Two, Problem

  14 Copy quote

• The world didn't stop because we weren't in it anymore.

  Susanna Kaysen

  World

  "Girl, Interrupted". Book by Susanna Kaysen, 1993.

  9 Copy quote

• When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Girl Interrupted, Sorrow, Sound

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.48, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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

  Susanna Kaysen

  Boredom, Despair, Emptiness

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Depression, Real, Angel

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.125, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?

  Susanna Kaysen

  Insanity, Acting, Matter

  FaceBook post by Susanna Kaysen from Jan 21, 2015

  4 Copy quote

• There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Thinking, Feels

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.138, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Interesting, Insanity

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.41, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. 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

  Country, Writing, Data

  6 Copy quote

• With wild eyes that had seen freedom.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Eye, Wild Eyes

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.20, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Wind, America, Girl Interrupted

  7 Copy quote

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

  Susanna Kaysen

  Reality, Conscious, Salvation

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.41, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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