I didn't like the '60s because it was too important what people who had nothing to do with the war thought about it.

With mental illness the trick is to not take your feelings so seriously; you’re zooming in and zooming away from things that go from being too important to being not important at all.

My only hope was to be polite.

The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thinking hard and reading hard and writing hard and trying to be of service

Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in.

Once you've been talked to by voices, it's not possible to go back to a world where talking voices is not possible.

Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in and of themselves do not make a life. If you lean on them too hard, you'll find that there's not much there. But if you add up a lot of things that aren't in and of themselves enough, it almost starts to add up to something.