Girl, Interrupted

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

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.

A person who doesn’t talk to herself or stare off into nothingness is therefore more alarming than a person who does.

Did the hospital specialize in poets
and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?

We had a lot of hairy legs on our ward. Early feminists.

The floor meant Yes, No, This, That, Up, Down, Day, Night—all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor.

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

Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?

I got a gruesome satisfaction from my sufferings. They proved my existence. All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.

When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep; when I was supposed to speak, I was silent; when a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it. My hunger, my thirst, my loneliness and boredom and fear were all weapons aimed at my enemy, the world.