Susanna Kaysen

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?

you are feeling alienated from people and unlike other people, therefore you are projecting your discomfort onto them. When you look at a face, you see a blob of rubber because you are worried that your face is a blob of rubber.

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

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

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

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

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.

Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.

Why did she do it? Nobody knew. Nobody dared to ask.