It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there's a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there's a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there's a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.

Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality.

There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same.

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.

When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.

We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.