We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.

Grief is natural,' she said. 'Overcoming it is a matter of choice.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.

So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

We're all well-acquainted with depression, we all know what the low moods are, but the mania was not something I knew much about. I didn't know that it would make someone dress extravagantly or start to pun, and to stay up and drink.

and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world