I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

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

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.

One of the advantages of science is that one's work, ultimately, is either replicated or it is not.

As best I could make out, having never heard the term until I arrived in California, being a WASP meant being mossbacked, lockjawed, rigid, humorless, cold, charmless, insipid, less than penetratingly bright, but otherwise---and inexplicably---to be envied.

Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-"sharpened and unusually creative thinking" and "increased productivity"?