Quotes from Susanna Kaysen

Not everything has a happy ending, and not everything has an ending. Some things just kind of dribble away or cut off abruptly.

Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry.

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

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.

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

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

Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is… 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. They were not perfect, but they were my friends.

Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.

Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?

When you're sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.

As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have.

Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.

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.

Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.

I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.

With wild eyes that had seen freedom.

Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.

I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.

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.

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

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

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

Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?