I had always thought of myself as fairly tough and fairly strong and fairly able to cope with anything. And then I had a series of personal losses. My mother died. A relationship that I was in came to end, and a variety of other things went awry.

Our needs are our greatest asset. It turns out I've learned to give all the things that I need.

We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it's purposeful.

The idea of anyone contemplating our family and witnessing the affection that we all have for one another and seeing evil in it is deeply hurtful and sad; and also deeply bewildering.

One of the things that frequently gets lost in descriptions of depression is that the depressed person often knows that it is a ludicrous condition to feel so disabled by the ordinary business of quotidian life.

Depression is the flaw in love. There's no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss. And that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy.

Treating an identity as an illness invites real illness to make a braver stand.