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.

I'm not an expert on the Middle East or terrorism or the use of military force or politics. It's all I can do to know a little bit about how to help people raise their kids and what to do when they get sick. When a war happens, I just hope it gets over with quickly so that how we take care of children becomes more important again.

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

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts.

When I talk to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and other patient support groups, I take questions at the end. At one talk I was asked, "What's the difference between yourself and someone without mental illness?". At another talk I was asked, "How do you make the voices be not so mean?". I wish I knew.

Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all.