Years of depression have robbed me of that—well, that give, that elasticity that everyone else calls perspective.

I am fortunate to have been well paid for an almost pathological honesty.

There are some remarks that are so stupid that to be even vaguely aware of them is the intellectual equivalent of living next door to Chernobyl.

And I want out of this life on drugs.

I’ve been looking for a feeling like that everywhere I go. I’ve been waiting for someone to see all the good in me at every truck stop and intersection along the way. I’ve been waiting all my life for the moment to arrive when I can just stop. Stop looking

My God, I could raise a family of six children and hold down a full-time job with all the energy I expend on depression!

That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal-unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space.