Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

I felt myself no longer a husk but a body with some of the body's sweet juices stirring again. I had my first dream in many months, confused but to this day imperishable, with a flute in it somewhere, and a wild goose, and a dancing girl.

It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.

The weather of Depression is unmodulated, its light a brownout.

What I really mean is that a great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.