The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

I have a tremendous battle with melancholy and depression.

Nothing mitigates the throes of depression like a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce and grated parmasan cheese, with a good fresh bread to wipe up.

There comes a time when something changes you… No matter the impact… Where the world no longer beats in time with you. You no longer feel amongst the fray.. And the feeling of loneliness is...

She could have risen from the ashes. Instead, she smoldered in the embers.

Our lives are a journey. As we move forward, we will not only figuratively experience the geography of life: the exhilaration of high mountains, the tranquility of calm meadows, the isolation of treacherous canyons, but...

[Jean] had the guts to kill herself, and I admire her for it, although, of course, she was quite crazy at the time, with a brain misfiring like a cross-wired laptop. Pressing the keystrokes love,...

It’s not a good idea.

Roosevelt spoke eloquently, in his penetrating tenor, of those ‘who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life . . ....

Sometimes,” says a fellow depressive, “I wish I was in a full body cast, with every bone in my body broken. That’s how I feel anyway. Then, maybe, people would stop minimising my illness because...

As a fact, we cannot give suffering precedence in either our individual or collective lives. We have to get on with things, and those who give precedence to suffering will be left behind. They fetter...

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

I lied, but by his reaction I think he liked what I had said. I had told Shreya about Sudeshna and she was okay with our relationship, but there were a few things that I...

HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n. Depression of one’s own spirits.Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot Where long the village rubbish had been shot Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps –“”Hypochondriasis.”” It meant The Dumps....

I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark.

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don’t believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave;...

Enlightenment is the Goal – Love is the Game – Taking steps are the rules! – Allan Rufus

It is as great a thing to love as it is to be loved. Love is not something that can be wasted.

What to do with life? Get out of bed, Derek. That’s what you do. You get out of bed, and you get yourself a cup of fucking coffee. That’s all you can do.

At the best of times, spring hurts depressives.

After a while, it all started to fade. No more pain, no more unwanted thoughts and no sound. Just darkness. I welcomed it. I was done.

At that moment, sitting on that park bench, The Writer was overcome by an indefinable sadness not completely ascribable to the state in which The Mother was now, nor the desperation of his decades-long creative...

The diabolical thing about melancholy is not that it makes you ill but that it makes you conceited and shortsighted; yes almost arrogant. You lapse into bad taste, thinking of yourself as Heine’s Atlas, whose...

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.

Bill Hewlett and I were brought up in the Depression. We weren’t interested in the idea of making any money. Our idea was if you couldn’t find a job, you’d make one for yourself.

We are doing a poor job in addressing depression. We are failing these people.

The more you engage in any type of emotion or behavior, the greater your desire for it will become.

My vocal chords fought to contain the memories that leaked out; I felt the weight off it all pressing down on me.

The core of your true self is never lost. Let go of all the pretending and the becoming you’ve done just to belong.Curl up with your rawness and come home. You don’t have to find...

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

However, robust evidence shows that people systematically overestimate the probability of positive future contingencies, and underestimate the probability of negative ones — only those who are depressed or dysphoric come to accurate assessments.

Something inside me clicks. It’s like I’ve spent my whole life fiddling with a complicated combination only to discover I was toying with the wrong lock.

It is madness. And if you don’t know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It’s the same with...

Broke is a relative term, like sister, cousin, or Uncle Sam.

I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me...

I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its...

Talking to a therapist, I thought, was like taking your clothes off and then taking your skin off, and then having the other person say, “Would you mind opening up your rib cage so that...

In the darkest time, I have always believed, the light will shine.

Love is a hollow word which seems at home in song lyrics and greeting cards, until you fall in love and discover it’s disconcerting power. Depression means nothing more than the blues, commercially packaged angst,...

You can have all the money in the world, one of the biggest mansions ever built, be one of the most famous people in the world, and still be as unhappy as Mariah Carey was....

When I’m naked, I can see my heart beating.

It’s crazy what a heart blinded by love can lead you to believe.

I think I’ll feel out of place wherever I go on earth, forever. But that’s fine. I have to make my peace with that.

When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.

For a moment you forget how much the loss hurts. Then you remember and it buries you.

You know those afternoons,” he asks, drawing a shaking breath, “where you’re just going along, doing fine, and then afternoon comes and it feels like you’ve just got the wind knocked out of you and...

Squiffy, have you ever felt a sort of strange emptiness in the heart? A sort of aching void of the soul?”Oh, rather!”What do you do about it?”I generally take a couple of cocktails.

I wish on one of the stars for divine orchestration and save the rest of them for all of the other girls in the world who will feel like I do tonight.

Bad thoughts can be dangerous if left to simmer and weaken the heart slowly and invisibly. Like termites that destroy the beams of a house, secretly, in the dark until it’s too late and everything...

When the depression hit, he bought land for 50 cents an acre and cows for $1 each from his neighbors who couldn’t make it.