Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide.

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.

I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

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.

Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.