Girl, Interrupted Quotes

“Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family's mental health.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“Lisa's eyes, once so magnetic, now just look empty.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“Five-minute. Fitfteen-minutes. Half-hour checks. Some nurses said, "Checks," when they opened the door. Click, turn the knob, swish, open the door, "Checks," swish, pull the door shut, turn the knob. Five-minute checks. Not enough time to drink a cup of coffee, read three pages of a book, take a shower.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“My motives were weak: an American-history paper I didn't want to write and the question I'd asked months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn't have to write the paper. Nor would I have to keep debating the question.

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.

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

“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," I said.”
― Susanna Kaysen; Toshiko Yoshida, Girl, Interrupted

“Daisy had two passions: laxatives and chicken.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“The student nurses were about nineteen or twenty: our age. They had clean, eager faces and clean, ironed uniforms. Their innocence and incompetence aroused our pity, unlike the incompetence of aides, which aroused our scorn. This was partly because student nurses stayed only a few weeks, whereas aides were incompetent for years at a stretch. Mainly, though, it was because when we looked at the student nurses, we saw alternate versions of ourselves. They were living out 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 that they could go on living these lives. They were our proxies.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted