In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves Susanna Kaysen More Quotes by Susanna Kaysen More Quotes From Susanna Kaysen Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco. Susanna Kaysen cheer-up san-francisco views I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor. Susanna Kaysen ice-cream six nurse Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat. Susanna Kaysen clothes light beautiful For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain. Susanna Kaysen data writing country This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled. Susanna Kaysen insanity people interesting ... now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there. Susanna Kaysen crazy safe depression 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. Susanna Kaysen soul character thinking It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality. Susanna Kaysen salvation conscious reality Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? Susanna Kaysen girl-interrupted matter insanity And this was the main precondition, that anything might be something else. Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range? Susanna Kaysen mountain-ranges mad thinking It's a long way from not having enough serotonin to thinking the world is "stale, flat and unprofitable"; even further to writing a play about a man driven by that thought. Susanna Kaysen writing men thinking But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years. Susanna Kaysen suicide would-be years Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom. Susanna Kaysen boredom despair emptiness The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. 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. Susanna Kaysen black-and-white squares night Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down. Susanna Kaysen girl-interrupted skins praying Freedom was the price of privacy. Susanna Kaysen privacy Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates. Susanna Kaysen flirting teacher way 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. Susanna Kaysen crowds purpose way Which is worse, overload or underload? Luckily, I never had to choose. One or Pass on to where? Back into my cells to lurk like a virus waiting for the next opportunity? Out into the ether of the world to wait for the circumstances that would provoke its reappearance? Endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture - it's the great mystery of mental illness. Susanna Kaysen cells waiting opportunity I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future. Susanna Kaysen my-future needed wanted
