Girl, Interrupted

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

Suicide is a form of murder—premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to.

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?

Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates.

Luckily, I avoided it, but I thought about suicide a lot. I’d think about it and make myself sad over my premature death, and then I’d feel better.

life demanded skills I didn’t have.

more literature than boyfriends lately, but I guess you can’t have everything (“a generally pessimistic outlook [is] observed”).

One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment.

I didn’t even bother with excuses, let alone explanations.