Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.

We all move uneasily within our restraints.

The assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious.

Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers...Restlessness and discontent are vital things... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist.

One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

Anybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering.