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Kay’s Mother
Kay’s older sister is beautiful and tempestuous. She and Kay have always had a difficult relationship marred by jealousy, misunderstanding, and judgment. Kay’s sister’s cruel, callous statements about Kay’s decision to take lithium (a mood stabilizer) directly contributed to Kay’s struggle with staying on the medication that she needed to function.
Kay’s Sister Quotes in An Unquiet Mind
The An Unquiet Mind quotes below are all either spoken by Kay’s Sister or refer to Kay’s Sister. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4 Quotes
I genuinely believed […] I ought to be able to handle whatever difficulties came my way without having to rely upon crutches such as medication.
I was not the only one who felt this way. When I became ill, my sister was adamant that I should not take lithium... […] She made it clear that she thought I should “weather it through” my depressions and manias, and that my soul would wither if I chose to dampen the intensity and pain of my experiences by using medication. […] One evening, now many years ago, she tore into me for […] “lithiumizing away my feelings.”
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Kay’s Sister Character Timeline in An Unquiet Mind
The timeline below shows where the character Kay’s Sister appears in An Unquiet Mind. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Into the Sun
...her “staunch ally” and role model. Her relationship with her charismatic, rebellious, and beautiful older sister, however, was “complicated”—Kay’s older sister hated military life and resented Kay for being their parents’...
(full context)
...Still, things weren’t always easy. With her brother off at college, her relationship with her sister became much more combative. Her parents’ relationship, too, began to deteriorate—her father’s moods “soared” and...
(full context)
Chapter 4: Missing Saturn
...life, too, felt she should be able to power through without the help of drugs—her sister, in particular, ridiculed Kay for relying on prescription medication, a stance which both humiliated Kay...
(full context)
...medication made her feel better, she felt she no longer needed it—the voice of her sister, her own staunch belief that she should be able to weather her moods alone, and...
(full context)
