You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.

Being crasy doesn't mean to be broken...It is you and me amplified", Girl, Interrupted

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella.

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.

My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous.

Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back... Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our minds...

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.