No one who had never been depressed like me could imagine that the pain could get so bad that death became a star to hitch up to, a fantasy of peace someday which seemed better than any life with all this noise in my head.

Oh, Ma, you're looking at all the trees, and I'm not even in the forest.

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.

It was just very interesting to me that certain types of women inspire people's imagination, and all of them were very difficult women.

Sometimes, I get so consumed by depression that it is hard to believe that the whole world doesn't stop and suffer with me.

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

Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead.