You can't find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.

Mania starts off fun, not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after awhile.

I say more power to [Madonna], though I don't know how much more power is out there.

Actually, social drug-taking went kind of low-key for a couple of years. Probably because of AIDS, people got very conscious of their health. But it seems to be making a comeback. Just the other night I was at a party where people kept disappearing into the bathroom every few minutes. I'm glad I did all that in my 20s and that I'm done with it. And that I wrote about it in Postcards from the Edge.

I probably have more male friends that talk about us in a way that doesn't thrill me. I sometimes get a bit surprised when females talk like that around men.

If you're manic-depressive and you're functioning in this world and doing it all well, I think, wow, you should be proud of being able to say, this is what I'm getting through right now.

You're not surprised when alcoholics act like alcoholics. It's more surprising when non-alcoholics start acting like alcoholics.