Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us.

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

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.

This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?

And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.

A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.