I think the experience of depression that I most think remains true throughout the years is it's very isolating. That to me is its strongest quality. That you're alone in a room, that you're cut off, you're just sort of stuck with it. It puts up a wall.

I always look to people and think whether they seem well-loved or not well-loved. That's one way I walk through life. Do they have some core that withstands the ravages? Everyone gets pulled down in life and has good moments. But it always interests me how people withstand things.

Then again, as those who suffer from it know, intractable depression creates a planet all its own, largely impermeable to influence from others except as shadow presences, urging you to come out and rejoin the world, take in a movie, go out for a bite, cheer up.

I think the experience of depression that I most think remains true throughout the years is it's very isolating. That to me is its strongest quality. That you're alone in a room, that you're cut off, you're just sort of stuck with it. It puts up a wall.

Everyone lies about sex, more or less, to themselves if not to others, to others if not to themselves, exaggerating its importance or minimizing its pull.

How much simpler it would be all around if you could put your mind in a cast, like a broken ankle, and elicit murmurings of sympathy from other people instead of skepticism (“You can’t really be feeling as bad as all that”) and in some cases outright hostility (“Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself so much ”).

There's something stubborn about families, unhappy ones in particular: they outlive themselves, and then they live on.