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
attend bunch cook home literary mysteries reviews shy stay
I don't have a whole bunch of literary connections. I don't write reviews or attend writer's conferences. I'm kind of shy and don't want to go to a party. I just want to stay home and read my murder mysteries and try to write and cook dinner.
girl-interrupted survival talent
I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.
suicide suicidal mean
Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
skills
As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have.
distance fall numbness
It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there's a window, you must imagine your body falling out of that window. If there's a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there's a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These excercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.
opposites fascination looks
Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
boredom feelings facts
My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous.
sleep silent pleasure
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.
cheer-up views san-francisco
Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.
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.
doctors disease language
Disease [is] as 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.
teacher flirting way
Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates.