The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

"The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out."

"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."

"My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you."

"If you were to kill yourself, how would you do it?"
"I've often thought of that. I'd blow my brains out with a gun."

"I thought drowning must be the kindest way to die, and burning the worst."

"Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently."

"The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it."

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream."