Quotes from book
Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen

Girl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen, relating her experiences as a young woman in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The memoir's title is a reference to the Vermeer painting Girl Interrupted at Her Music.While writing the novel Far Afield, Kaysen began to recall her almost two years at McLean Hospital. She obtained her file from the hospital with the help of a lawyer.In 1999, the memoir was adapted into a film of the same name starring Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie and Brittany Murphy. It was directed by James Mangold.

“The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: Naked, we needed protection, and the hospital protected us. Of course, the hospital had stripped us naked in the first place—but that just underscored its obligation to shelter us. And the hospital fulfilled its obligation. Somebody in our families had to pay a good deal of money for that: sixty dollars (1967 dollars) a day just for the room; therapy, drugs, and consultations were extra. Ninety days was the usual length of mental-hospital insurance coverage, but ninety days was barely enough to get started on a visit to McLean. My workup alone took ninety days. The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization.

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“The only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: 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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

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

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

““A writer,” I said, when my social worker asked me what I planned to do when I got out of the hospital. “I’m going to be a writer.” “That’s a nice hobby, but how are you going to earn a living?” My social worker and I did not like each other. I didn’t like her because she didn’t understand that this was me, and I was going to be a writer; I was not going to type term bills or sell au gratin bowls or do any other stupid things.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“I could not and did not want to: ski, play tennis, or go to gym class; attend to any subject in school other than English and biology; write papers on any assigned topics (I wrote poems instead of papers for English; I got F’s); plan to go or apply to college; give any reasonable explanation for these refusals.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: “The person often experiences this instability of self-image as chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom.” My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous. A partial list follows. I could not and did not want to: ski, play tennis, or go to gym class; attend to any subject in school other than English and biology; write papers on any assigned topics (I wrote poems instead of papers for English; I got F’s); plan to go or apply to college; give any reasonable explanation for these refusals.

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

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl… interrupted.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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 a man driven by that thought.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

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