In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody. So it's an isolating pain, a completely isolating pain.

It is true that I had wanted to die , but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. Overwhelmingly, I was enormously glad to have been born, grateful for life, and I couldn’t imagine not wanting to pass on life to someone else.

But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.

Chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life.

I am by temperament an optimist, and I thought from the beginning that there was much to be written about suicide that was strangely heartening.

Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.

I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease.