Quotes from Susanna Kaysen

How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label compulsively promiscuous? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That sounds more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess--if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing. And for seventeen-year-old, how many boys?

How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label compulsively promiscuous? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That sounds more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess--if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing. And for seventeen-year-old girls, how many boys?

They were all seventeen and miserable, just like me. They didn't have time to wonder why I was a little more miserable than most.

Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots.

Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling, that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family's mental health.

Thus, our keepers. As for finders—well, we had to be our own finders.

I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. I still think about it. I'll always have to think about it.

This was what was wonderful, standing alone in the big, soft night rewriting the past to make myself miss what had never been. Now that it was over, I could turn the past into anything I wanted.

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.

By the time we hit the streets they were silent and closed in on us, and they had assumed the Nonchalant Look, an expression that said, I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor. But they were, and we were their six lunatics, so we behaved like lunatics.

Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slipcover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide.

Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner.

But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

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

Just to get through life was no ambition. It was the opposite of ambition.

You can see why doubting one's own craziness is considered a good sign: It's a sort of flailing response by the second interpreter. What's happening? the second interpreter is saying. He tells me it's a tiger but I'm not convinced; maybe there's something wrong with me. Enough doubt is in there to give "reality" a toehold.

Assim nuas, precisávamos de proteção, e o hospital nos protegia. É claro que primeiro o hospital nos desnudava - mas isso apenas reforçava sua obrigação de nos dar abrigo.

Life was hellish, she knew that. But, her smile hinted, she'd burned all that out of her.

Stavolta lessi il titolo del quadro: Ragazza interrotta mentre suona. Interrotta mentre suona: com'era stata la mia vita, interrotta nella musica dei miei diciassette anni, com'era stata la sua vita, strappata e fissata su tela: un momento reso immobile, per tutti gli altri momenti, qualsiasi cosa fossero o avrebbero potuto essere. Quale vita può guarirne?

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.

If I who was previously revolting am now this far from my crazy self, how much further are you who were never revolting, and how much deeper your revulsion?

Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons that 'animates' us.

The shimmering, ever-shifting borderline, like all boundaries beckons and asks to be crossed.

a tidal wave of blackness broke over her head. The entire world was obliterated–for a few minutes. She knew she had gone crazy. She looked around the theater to see if it had happened to everyone, but all the other people were engrossed in the movie. She rushed out, because the darkness in the theater was too much combined with the darkness in her head.