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

Life for the unwell is discontinuous and unpredictable. Things just come out of nowhere. People try but mostly do a lousy job of taking care of you.

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

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.

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.

My only hope was to be polite.

Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?