Freedom was the price of privacy.

A thought is a hard thing to control.

With wild eyes that had seen freedom.

Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse.

All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.

Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?

The only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.

Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.

Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry.

You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.

The world didn't stop because we weren't in it anymore.

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

Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.

I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor.

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

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella.

It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace.

I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.

What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?

I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapses

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

... now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there.

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.

Being crasy doesn't mean to be broken...It is you and me amplified", Girl, Interrupted

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

Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates.

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

When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy.

It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality.

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

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

It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.

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

My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous.

A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back... Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our minds...

This behavior may...counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl,Interrupted

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.

It's a fairly accurate portrait of me at eighteen, minus a few quirks like reckless driving and eating binges. It's accurate but it isn't profound.

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

We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that it was my task to swallow fifty asprin.It was my task:my job for the day.-17 Girl Interrupted

My father was judgmental and kind of mean, and I'm like that. And he was very perfectionistic, and I'm like that. And he was very hard on himself, and I'm like that.

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.

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.

Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast. I'm not talking about onset or duration. I mean the quality of the insanity, the day-to-day business of being nuts.

The girl at her music sits in another sort of light,the fitful,overcast light of lie,by which we see ourselves and others only imprefectly, and seldom..-Girl,Interrupted

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