Susanna Kaysen Quotes

I've always been this insane. Isn't that interesting?

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

To be crazy is not necessarily to writhe in snake pits or converse with imaginary gods. It can sometimes be not knowing what to do in the morning.

Crazy isn´t always what they say it is. It´s not always the old woman wearing sneakers and a skirt and a scarf, wandering around with a shopping cart, hollering at no one, nothing, tumbling through years in her head. No. Sometimes it is a girl wearing boots and jeans and a sweater, arms crossed in front of her, shivering, wandering through the streets at night, all night, murmuring to no one, nothing, tumbling through the strange unreal dimensions in her head.

I don't think any human being/artist is 100% emotionally stable, based on the human condition and our emotions that relate to it.

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.

That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

There's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill and we're all haunted by something, and some people manage to find a way to ride it out so that they don't wind up needing extra help. So I think that "mental illness," as a term, is garbage. Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something.

The existence of illness in the body may no doubt be called a shadow of the true illness which is held by man in his mind.

How crazy craziness makes everyone, how irrationally afraid. The madness hidden in each of us, called to, identified, aroused like a lust. And against that the jaw sets. The more I fear my own insanity the more I must punish yours.

Sanity is very rare; every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.

When you're really crazy you don't question it. Being aware of my behaviors stops them. Sure, a lot of people pick their cuticles, but how many people cut big parts of their skin off? It's unfair because I have been judged.

As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.

I was stark raving mad, and my family was too polite to mention it. That's what living with the Yamanis does to people. They get so well-mannered they won't mention you're crazy.

What a curious creature is man; with what a variety of powers and faculties is he endued; yet how easily is he disturbed and put out of order.

I feel the closest to crazy when I'm disagreeing with the voice in my head

Maybe you're going insane." "Maybe," agreed Kernel. "I was joking." "I wasn't.

Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways.

Suffering and drama begin when you lie to yourself, even if you don't realize you are lying.

There are only three things you need to let go of judging, controlling, and being right. Release these three and you will have the whole mind and twinkly heart of a child.

In the true man there is a child concealed who wants to play.

I am too much in love with my lies and hypocrisies not to confess them fervently.

I didn't know there was something really wrong, because everyone was crazy. It's just that everyone else was still functional. I didn't realize that I was any worse off.

I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life. I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn’t see any way to change things. Only end them.

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.