"I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep it from happening, but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had."
— 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)

"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)

"I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"“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

"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)

"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

"In those pamphlets that they give at mental health centers where they list the ten or so symptoms that would indicate a clinical depression, 'suicide threats' or even simple 'talk of suicide' is considered cause for concern. I guess the point is that what's just talk one day may become a real activity the next. So perhaps after years of walking around with these germinal feelings, these raw thoughts, these scattered moments of saying I wish I were dead, eventually I too, sooner or later, would succumb to the death urge. In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Why do anything-- why wash my hair, why read Moby Dick, why fall in love, why sit through six hours of Nicholas Nickleby, why care about American intervention in Central America, why spend time trying to get into the right schools, why dance to the music when all of us are just slouching toward the same inevitable conclusion? The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"I was, after the breakup, what you call a complete wreck. For the first time in my life, my pain had a focus. Any I just couldn't help myself. I didn't care what anyone thought, I didn't care that all the girls in school would say, See, he finally got wise, I didn't care how stupid I would look with teary mascara stains and purple eyeliner tracks down my cheeks, I didn't care about anything except how this was the worst pain ever. I used to weep for never having anything worth losing, but now I was simply resplendent--puffy, red, hysterical-- with a loss I could identify completely. I felt justified in my sorrow and I couldn't stand the way everything about Zachary seemed to be everywhere: Every staircase we'd necked on and lounge chair we'd chatted on between classes was redolent with memories of him. My God, even the lint that gathered on my clothing and still hadn't come out in the wash reminded me of Zachary. I would burst into tears in class and not bother to excuse myself. I cried on the subway. One day, I got mugged walking to the subway, and figured it was as good an excuse as any to go home and stay there."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."
— J.K. Rowling

"Your mother died to save you...love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves it's own mark...to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever."
— J.K. Rowling

"You think the dead we loved truly ever leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

"There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place."
— J.K. Rowling

"When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?"
— Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)

"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. . . . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known- no wonder, then, that I return the love."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it."
— Mark Twain

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."
— Bob Marley

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."
— Maya Angelou

"In the end only kindness matters."
— Jewel

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

"My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. "
— Abraham Lincoln

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."
— John Lennon

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."
— Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words)

"If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything."
— Marilyn Monroe

"A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world."
— Marilyn Monroe

"It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Well behaved women rarely make history."
— Marilyn Monroe