Quotes from Susan Sheehan

When you know all of those things exist for other people but not for you, sometimes it's very hard to endure the not having.

Miss Frumkin rummaged through her bag looking for a spoon. She seemed to be aware that there was no spoon in the bag, but she insisted on rummaging anyway. Finding no spoon, she took out her toothbrush and began to eat the yogurt with the toothbrush. Miss O'Reilly laughed at her. Miss Frumkin didn't seem to mind. "They laughed at Bell and they laughed at Edison," she said, throwing the toothbrush into the wastebasket. She finished eating the yogurt with her fingers.

As he spoke, Miss Frumkin looked at her chart, which was directly in front of Dr. Sun, facing him. Reading upside down is one of Miss Frumkin's talents. It has enabled her, over the years, to read many things not intended for her eyes.

she was counting the brushstrokes when she brushed her teeth — on the rare days that she did brush her teeth.

State and federal legislation — particularly the Community Mental Health Centers Act, passed by Congress in 1963 — called for the funding of community mental-health centers, to reduce the role of the discredited state hospitals in the care of the mentally ill, but community facilities were built slowly when they were built at all.