It is so hard to learn to put sadness in perspective so hard to understand that it is a feeling that comes in degrees, it can be a candle burning gently and harmlessly in your...

I froze before the keyboard. I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words. The pain cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk...

Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to...

I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word ‘madness’ to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. ‘Madness’ is too glamorous a term to convey what...

“Insanity is knowing that what you’re doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can’t stop it.”

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever...

Experience,” which is just a euphemism for heartache and heartbreak, failed love and false promises, for every time you told yourself This is the real thing and Finally I’ve found my way home only to...

I start to feel like I can’t maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole...

I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn’t one I’ll have to fight for as long as I live. I...

Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead. Sometimes I wish that there were a way to let people know that just because I live in...

Sometimes I wish that there were a way to let people know that just because I live in a world without rules, and in a life that is lawless, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt...

And she keeps saying, how can you do this to me? And i want to scream, what do you mean, how can I do this to you? Aren’t we confusing our pronouns here? The question,...

I start to feel like I cant maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole...

Some friends don’t understand this. They don’t understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you’re wonderful just the way you...

As someone very sagely said during the parricide trials of the Menendez Brothers: anytime your kids kill you, you are at least partly to blame.

I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing...

In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead

The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power, … We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn’t feel that it detracts from our femininity.

Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?… I don’t know the answer, I know...

The brief relief of seeing other people when I leave my room turns into a desperate need to be alone, and then being alone turns into a terrible fear that I will have no friends,...

“…occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.”

That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.

After all, as it says on a needlepoint sampler or throw pillow or the occasional bumper sticker: Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere. In high heels. Or mules by Manolo Blahnik,...

I’d really like to write a book about Timothy McVeigh, but it would only work if he cooperated.

…occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.

Insanity is knowing that what you’re doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can’t stop it.

Woke up this morning afraid I was gonna live.

“I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh,...

I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave,...

I don’t think it matters how many parents you’ve got, as long as those who are around make their presence a good one.

I’ll see Naomi Wolf on television periodically, I have nothing against her and what she says, but I’ll feel that she’s a politician, like she’s got an agenda to get across and that she doesn’t...

Sometimes it feels like we’re all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.

I start to feel like I can ‘ t maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid...

When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I’m still where I was when I closed...

“I froze before the keyboard. I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words. The pain cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk...

I don’t want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.

I think, quite frankly, that the world simply does not care for the complicated girls, the ones who seem too dark, too deep, too vibrant, too opinionated, the ones who are so intriguing that new...

In life, single women are the most vulnerable adults. In movies, they are given imaginary power.

Everything’s plastic, we’re all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter.

it’s the people you are close to, the ones who love you, theo nes who have seen your heart, who have touched your soul- to them, it is obvious that something is wrong or missing....

I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.

They have no idea what a bottomless pit of misery I am.

The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death. When I look ahead, all I can see is my final demise. And they say not...

I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.

Because, frankly, I have a tough time feeling that feminism has done a damn bit of good if I can’t be the way I am and have the world accommodate it on some level.

It was just very interesting to me that certain types of women inspire people’s imagination, and all of them were very difficult women.

In those pamphlets that they give at mental health centers where they list the ten or so symptoms that would indicate a clinical depression, ‘suicide threats’ or even simple ‘talk of suicide’ is considered cause...

I wonder if any of them can tell from just looking at me that all I am is the sum total of my pain, a raw woundedness so extreme that it might be terminal. It...

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr. Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part...

If I were another person, I go on, I wouldn’t want to deal with me, I don’t want to deal with me, It’s so hopeless, I want out of this life. I really do. I...