Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry.

But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.

Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?

Not everything has a happy ending, and not everything has an ending. Some things just kind of dribble away or cut off abruptly.

Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously. Disease is 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.

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

All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.