Through the healing process of time-and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases-most people survive depression which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.

[However], the sufferer from depression has no option, and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must ... present a face approximating the one associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod, and frown and, God help him, even smile.

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

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

Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what a friend of mine calls

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.

We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.