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.

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

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

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“I think many people ill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Variant: I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.
Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: I've gone back to the Frick since then to look at her and at the two other Vermeers. Vermeers, after all, are hard to come by, and the one in Boston has been stolen. The other two are self-contained paintings. The people in them are looking at each other -- the lady and her maid, the soldier and his sweetheart. Seeing them is peeking at them through a hole in a wall. And the wall is made of light -- that entirely credible yet unreal Vermeer light. Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beauitful, 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. The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.

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

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“It's a fairly accurate portrait of me at eighteen, minus a few quirks like reckless driving and eating binges. It's accurate but it isn't profound.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

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

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back… Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our mind.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“With wild eyes that had seen freedom.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn’t have.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“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 book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“This behavior may… counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl, Interrupted”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Every few months Torrey’s parents flew from Mexico to Boston to harangue her. She was crazy, she had driven them crazy, she was malingering, they couldn’t afford it, and so forth. After they left Torrey would give a report in her tired drawl. “Then Mom said, ‘You made me into an alcoholic,’ and then Dad said, ‘I’m going to see you never get out of this place,’ and then they sort of switched and Mom said, ‘You’re nothing but a junkie,’ and Dad said, ‘I’m not going to pay for you to take it easy in here while we suffer.’ ” “Why do you see them?” Georgina asked. “Oh,” said Torrey. “It’s how they show their love,” said Lisa. Her parents never made contact with her. The nurses agreed with Lisa. They told Torrey she was mature for agreeing to see her parents when she knew they were going to confuse her. Confuse was the nurses’ word for abuse.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)