I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars....But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable....It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations

If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?

Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.

Exuberance is a gift of grace that allows us to move on, to seek, to love again.

Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.