For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain.

Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?

With wild eyes that had seen freedom.

Being crasy doesn't mean to be broken...It is you and me amplified", Girl, Interrupted

Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.

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

It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace.