17 quotes
As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn’t have.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
But most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
My family had a lot of characteristics—achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations—that all seemed to be recessive in me.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
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.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Another odd feature of the parallel universe is that although it is invisible from this side, once you are in it you can easily see the world you came from.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
I was that one who wore black and—really, I’ve heard it from several people—slept with the English teacher.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Quite often social contrariness and a generally pessimistic outlook are observed. Alternation between dependency and self-assertion is common.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
“Where is your term paper?” asked my history teacher. “I didn’t write it. I have nothing to say on that topic.” “You could have picked another topic.” “I have nothing to say on any historical topic.”
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
My self-image was not unstable. I saw myself, quite correctly, as unfit for the educational and social systems.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Later that day, when Alice was off having a Rorschach, I asked, “How can a person who’s never eaten honey have a family that can afford to send her here?” “Probably really incredibly crazy and interesting, so they let her in for less,” said Georgina.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
My motives were weak: an American-history paper I didn’t want to write and the question I’d asked months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn’t have to write the paper. Nor would I have to keep debating the question.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)