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 motive is paramount. Without a strong motive, you're sunk. My motives were weak: an American-history paper I didn't want to write and the question I'd asked months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn't have to write the paper. Nor would I have to keep debating the question.


Girl, Interrupted (1994)

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...