Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

Are you crazy? It's a common phrase, I know. But it means something particular to me: the tunnels, the security screens, the plastic forks, the shimmering, ever-shifting borderline that like all boundaries beckons and asks to be crossed. I do not want to cross it again.

It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.

What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?

My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

Disease [is] as one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.

A thought is a hard thing to control.