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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.

— Susanna Kaysen Girl, Interrupted (1994)

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More quotes by Susanna Kaysen

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

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)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Susanna Kaysen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.