we each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.

A great book should leave you with many experiences.

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.

In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - - not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

The stigma of self-inflicted death is for some people a hateful blot that demands erasure at all costs.