...Someone speaks in soft tones to me and says I am psychotic, but it's going to be all right. I put on my hat, unperturbed, and ask for some crayons.

For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write.

For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.

Me and my needs were driving my mother away. Me and my needs retreated to my closet, disappeared into fairy tales. I started making up a world where my needs wouldn´t exist at all.

Hospitalizations in general are blurry. The days are the same, precisely the same. Nothing changes. Life melts down to a simple progression of meals. They become a way of life fairly quickly. You may welcome this transition. It may seem inevitable to you. You have been removed from the world. It is all right, in a way, because there is nothing so sure, so safe, as routine.

After a lifetime of silence, it is difficult then to speak.

The term “starvation diet” refers to 900 calories a day. I was on one-third of a starvation diet. What do you call that? One word that comes to my mind: “suicide.