“Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or
me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished
you could be a child forever.”
***
“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. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A
successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of
which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.”
***
“Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show
age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide. ”
***
“I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.”
***
“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage!
Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit
alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a
roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like
putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's
cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a
whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been
planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put
the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.
What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?
I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.
She lit the match.”
What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?
I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.
She lit the match.”
***
“Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is… Crazy isn’t being
broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you
ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child
forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends.”
***
“When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.”
***
“Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part
that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and
made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
***
“The only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.”
***
“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. Then, depending on
how the rest of the family is feeling that person is kept inside or
snatched out, to prove something about the family's mental health.”
***
“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How
you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to
try to kill the thing on the inside.”
***
“Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something
when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train
moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the
60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.”
***
“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”
***
“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.”
***
“The point is, the brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself
changes its perceptions. To make a new version of the
not-entirely-false model, imagine the first interpreter as a foreign
correspondent, reporting from the world. The world in this case means
everything out- or inside our bodies, including serotonin levels in the
brain. The second interpreter is a news analyst, who writes op-ed
pieces. They read each other's work. One needs data, the other needs an
overview; they influence each other. They get dialogues going.
INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.
INTERPRETER TWO: I believe that's because the shoe is too tight.
INTERPRETER ONE: Checked that. Took off the shoe. Foot still hurts.
INTERPRETER TWO: Did you look at it?
INTERPRETER ONE: Looking. It's red.
INTERPRETER TWO: No blood?
INTERPRETER ONE: Nope.
INTERPRETER TWO: Forget about it.
INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.
Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.
An exemplary piece of confusion.
INTERPRETER ONE: There's a tiger in the corner.
INTERPRETER TWO: No, that's not a tiger- that's a bureau.
INTERPRETER ONE: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!
INTERPRETER TWO: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it.
Then all the dendrites and neurons and serotonin levels and interpreters collect themselves and trot over to the corner.
If you are not crazy, the second interpreter's assertion, that this is a bureau, will be acceptable to the first interpreter. If you are crazy, the first interpreter's viewpoint, the tiger theory, will prevail.
The trouble here is that the first interpreter actually sees a tiger. The messages sent between neurons are incorrect somehow. The chemicals triggered are the wrong chemicals, or the impulses are going to the wrong connections. Apparently, this happens often, but the second interpreter jumps in to straighten things out.”
INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.
INTERPRETER TWO: I believe that's because the shoe is too tight.
INTERPRETER ONE: Checked that. Took off the shoe. Foot still hurts.
INTERPRETER TWO: Did you look at it?
INTERPRETER ONE: Looking. It's red.
INTERPRETER TWO: No blood?
INTERPRETER ONE: Nope.
INTERPRETER TWO: Forget about it.
INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.
Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.
An exemplary piece of confusion.
INTERPRETER ONE: There's a tiger in the corner.
INTERPRETER TWO: No, that's not a tiger- that's a bureau.
INTERPRETER ONE: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!
INTERPRETER TWO: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it.
Then all the dendrites and neurons and serotonin levels and interpreters collect themselves and trot over to the corner.
If you are not crazy, the second interpreter's assertion, that this is a bureau, will be acceptable to the first interpreter. If you are crazy, the first interpreter's viewpoint, the tiger theory, will prevail.
The trouble here is that the first interpreter actually sees a tiger. The messages sent between neurons are incorrect somehow. The chemicals triggered are the wrong chemicals, or the impulses are going to the wrong connections. Apparently, this happens often, but the second interpreter jumps in to straighten things out.”
“Don’t ask me those questions! Don’t ask me what life means or how
we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don’t talk about how
nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining
like oil in the sun. I don’t want to hear about the tiger in the corner
or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist.”
***
“Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t
something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some
getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A
successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of
which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
***
“It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of
warm earth. Suicide weather.”
warm earth. Suicide weather.”
***
“My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions,
talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.”
***
“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. ”
***
“Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?”
***
“Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of
disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.”
disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.”
***
“I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was
that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So
I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I
could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and
irrefutably an inward condition.”
***
“Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.”
***
“Disease is one of our languages. Doctors
understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person
with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.”
***
“The girl at her music sits in another sort of light,the
fitful,overcast light of lie,by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom..”
***
“This behavior may...counteract feelings of 'numbness' and
depersonalization that arise during periods of extreme stress.”
***
“When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep. When I was
supposed to sleep, I was silent. When a pleasure offered itself to me, I
avoided it.”
***
“The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question,
it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the
debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did
was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not
kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good
got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.”
***
“It's a fairly accurate portrait of me at eighteen, minus a few
quirks like reckless driving and eating binges. It's accurate but it
isn't profound.”
***
“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”
***
“Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression.
Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.”
Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.”
***
“Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers.
Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets
and singers specialized in madness?”
***
“Are you crazy? It's a common phrase, I know. But it means
something particular to me: the tunnels, the security screens, the
plastic forks, the shimmering, ever-shifting borderline that like all
boundaries beckons and asks to be crossed. I do not want to cross it
again.”
***
“In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended.
What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at
rest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction.
Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to
then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces,
flowers.”
What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at
rest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction.
Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to
then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces,
flowers.”
***
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