Mental illnesses are so frightening and there's so much ignorance about them that I think it comforts people to think, 'Oh, well, it happens to these people because they deserve it.'

Having been a journalist for thirty-nine years, I've developed a pretty thick skin.

People with mental illnesses are dying on our streets. More than 350,000 are in jails and prisons. Most are people whose only real crime is they got sick.

I think that some of the greatest muckrakers and some of the greatest investigative journalists of all time had strong feelings about civil rights. There is a role for the journalist-advocate. And as long as you play your cards on the table, I think thats a role that we should allow.

Sometimes I feel the only way I can get a major publisher interested in mental illness is if I find a character who has bipolar disorder and is also a love-sick vampire attending an English school called Hogwarts. But I'm not giving up.

The actor playing Lee got really irritated. He tried to escape by turning, running, or twisting and talking or yelling above the voice of the illness, but the illness didn't sit quietly.

Mental illnesses are so frightening and there's so much ignorance about them that I think it comforts people to think, 'Oh, well, it happens to these people because they deserve it.'