The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.

I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.

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

I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

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.