When you're mired in the depths of depression, it's impossible to believe that anything can get better, but it can and it will. Seek out low-cost or free counseling. Get help and support from your community and stick with it until you can afford some fancy private shrink. Do anything. Join a church group if you have to. It doesn't have to be about religion, it's about not feeling alone. Also, do not be afraid to go to the emergency room. I've been there.

In the short term, it absolutely feels devastating to break a bond of friendship. In the long term, it is the best possible thing. You're actually doing something noble and good if you do it in the right way. You can leave them with, "I wish you the best, but I have to take care of myself." Or you don't have to wish them the best. It's okay if you don't. Maybe they don't deserve the best. That's not up to you to decide. You not wishing someone the best is not going to make anyone's life not the best.

What I really wanted wasn't what I thought I was supposed to want. It wasn't what people had told me I should want or that books and movies and TV had put across. What I really wanted was to be a working artist, which I am.

When I go to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, they have wonderful topiary in the shapes of characters. I apply the principle to my life. "Prune away that which is not a Disney princess!" I think Michelangelo said that.

It's like there's this knowledge hanging in the air that one person has more power than the other, and we're supposed to pretend everything is nice and normal and equal, but in reality, luck or chance has showered benefits on one person that the other person couldn't dream of.

If friends are taking more from you than they're giving, it doesn't matter if they are in the throes of addiction. It does not matter if they are suicidal. It does not matter if they were nice to you when you were kids. It doesn't matter if you've told them things you've never told anybody else and only they can relate. If this person is draining you, this person is not right for you.

When you're disappointed romantically - when people evolve or they move on, when somebody doesn't love you in the same way anymore or you don't love somebody in the same way - it's devastating. Just because you leave a relationship doesn't mean that you don't love that person. It doesn't mean that you don't miss that person terribly.