Susanna Kaysen
Susanna Kaysen
Susanna Kaysenis an American author, best known for her memoir Girl, Interrupted...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth11 November 1948
CountryUnited States of America
stupid thinking people
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.
cheer-up views san-francisco
Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.
interesting people insanity
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.
insanity girl-interrupted matter
Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?
cutting kind happy-endings
Not everything has a happy ending, and not everything has an ending. Some things just kind of dribble away or cut off abruptly.
able reason smoke
It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace.
depression real mean
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.
suicide years peculiar
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.
ambition expectations girl-interrupted
My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.
velocity busy life-is
An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
depression crazy safe
... now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there.
opportunity cells waiting
Which is worse, overload or underload? Luckily, I never had to choose. One or Pass on to where? Back into my cells to lurk like a virus waiting for the next opportunity? Out into the ether of the world to wait for the circumstances that would provoke its reappearance? Endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture - it's the great mystery of mental illness.
purpose crowds way
And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.
suicide self-harm suicidal
A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.