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

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.

Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.

I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no... and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated.

I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.

I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.