In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.

if only my whole life could be words and music, if only everything else could slip away.

I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.

homesickness is just a state of mind for me. i'm always missing someone or someplace or something, i'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. my life has been one long longing.

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I’m feeling now. Its so bad, its useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.

The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death. When I look ahead, all I can see is my final demise. And they say, But maybe not for seventy or eighty years. And I say, Maybe you, but me, I'm already gone.