suicide is the ultimate 'one-up,' as it were, the accusation that brooks no defense, the argument won at last.

A humane and authentic book written by another voice from the trenches.

Worrying is one of my few forms of prayer.

Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions.

What cook can match herself against hunger and memory?

The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end...in the end it is our only ally.

...to experience the reality was to suffer a boredom as endless as the illness itself...the boredom of insanity was a great desert, so great that anyone's violence or agony seemed an oasis, and the brief companionship seemed like a rain in the desert that was numbered and counted and remembered long after it was gone.