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Susanna Kaysen

Susanna Kaysen Quotes

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Famous Susanna Kaysen Quotes

“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.”

IfsWayImportantBodyFallProcessPracticeImagineAchieveDyingWindowSkinsDistanceTrainYour BodyOne WayWheelsEmptinessKnivesDetachmentNumbnessPiercingsTorsoGirl InterruptedImagining Yourself
Author:Susanna Kaysen
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“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.”

PeopleIfsMadeMatterAbleStuffInterestingActingSeeingBlindClarityInsanityBehaveDroppingSome Interesting
Book:Girl, Interrupted
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“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.”

IfsHardEnoughWould BeNightBlackWhiteSkinsOppositesBiggerIceSquaresContrastBlack And WhiteCreamIce CreamBotheredSupermarketsIndecisionParlorTilesDay Night
Author:Susanna Kaysen
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