# Quote — Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

> Every few months Torrey’s parents flew from Mexico to Boston to harangue her. She was crazy, she had driven them crazy, she was malingering, they couldn’t afford it, and so forth. After they left Torrey would give a report in her tired drawl. “Then Mom said, ‘You made me into an alcoholic,’ and then Dad said, ‘I’m going to see you never get out of this place,’ and then they sort of switched and Mom said, ‘You’re nothing but a junkie,’ and Dad said, ‘I’m not going to pay for you to take it easy in here while we suffer.’ ” “Why do you see them?” Georgina asked. “Oh,” said Torrey. “It’s how they show their love,” said Lisa. Her parents never made contact with her. The nurses agreed with Lisa. They told Torrey she was mature for agreeing to see her parents when she knew they were going to confuse her. Confuse was the nurses’ word for abuse.

- Author: [Susanna Kaysen](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen.md)
- Book: [Girl, Interrupted](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susanna_Kaysen#Girl,_Interrupted_(1994)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted/every-few-months

## More from this book

> When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted/when-women-are.md)

> The world didn’t stop because we weren’t in it anymore; far from it. Night after night tiny bodies fell to the ground on our TV screen: black people, young people, Vietnamese people, poor people—some dead, some only bashed up for the moment. There were always more of them to replace the fallen and join them the next night. Then came the period when people we knew—not knew personally, but knew of—started falling to the ground: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. Was that more alarming? Lisa said it was natural. “They gotta kill them,” she explained. “Otherwise it’ll never settle down.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted/the-world-didnt.md)

> Is this the type of friend or lover I want to have? I ask myself every time I meet someone new. Charming but shallow; good-hearted but a bit conventional; too handsome for his own good; fascinating but probably unreliable; and so forth. I guess I've had my share of unreliable. More than my share? How many would constitute more than my share?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susanna-kaysen/girl-interrupted/is-this-the.md)