"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
— Sylvia Plath

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart."
— Sarah Dessen

"Society. The same society, I might add, that dictates that little girls should always be sugar and spice and everything nice, which encourages them not to be assertive. And that, in turn, then leads to low self-esteem, which can lead to eating disorders and increased tolerance and acceptance of domestic, sexual, and substance abuse."

"You get all that from a pink Onesie?" Leah said after a moment."
— Sarah Dessen

"I suppose he's making a real fashion statement, but this is high school. You're not supposed to be real. You're supposed to be enough like everyone else to get through and out into the waiting world."
— Elizabeth Scott (Love You Hate You Miss You)

"The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are."
— Elizabeth Scott (Something, Maybe)

"Things change. Stuff happens. Life goes on.

"
— Elizabeth Scott (Perfect You)

"I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must.
Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.
"
— Libba Bray

"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."
— Libba Bray

"It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, beacause it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death."
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"I began to measure things in absence instead of presence."
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing."
— Marya Hornbacher (Madness: A Bipolar Life)

"You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest."
— Marya Hornbacher (Madness: A Bipolar Life)

"That’s the nice thing about dreams, the way you wake up before you fall."
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back."
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose."
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least for me, was: How do I decide I want to live?"
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"There is, in the end, the letting go."
— Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)

"We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need."
— Marya Hornbacher

"“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.”"
— Elizabeth Wurtzel

"“I wonder if any of them can tell from just looking at me that all I am is the sum total of my pain, a raw woundedness so extreme that it might be terminal. It might be terminal velocity, the speed of the sound of a girl falling down to a place from where she can't be retrieved. What if I am stuck down here for good?”"
— Elizabeth Wurtzel

"That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel

"homesickness is just a state of mind for me. i'm always missing someone or someplace or something, i'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. my life has been one long longing."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Just as our parents quieted us when we were noisy by putting us in front of the television set, maybe we're now learning to quiet our own adult noise with Prozac. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don't know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I've had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel

"My God, I could raise a family of six children and hold down a full-time job with all the energy I expend on depression!"
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel

"Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"I sit there in my bed staring at the wall, feeling happy, enjoying the way the wall looks, how pink and how white it is. Pink and white, as far as I’m concerned, have never looked quite so pink and white before."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say. "
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"I have never heard a more eloquent silence."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it. . . . Someone just ripped off my eyelids."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)

"Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.

.........

I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.

I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

I am thawing."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)

"None of [the books are] worth reading. There are no fairy tales, no faerie tails, no sword-swinging princesses or lightning-throwing gods."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
— Virginia Woolf

"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

"Books are the mirrors of the soul."
— Virginia Woolf (Between the Acts)

"I have lost friends, some by death...others by sheer inability to cross the street."
— Virginia Woolf