Elizabeth Wurtzel citations

Page 2

“In a typical mental health catch-22, the alienating nature of depression tends to keep its sufferers from finding their way to the very support groups that might help them.”

“As soon as I was out in the street, I realized I didn't want to be alone after all, I realized I didn't want to be anything at all.”

“But he does insist on a conversation. Goddamn it! Why can't people just do what I want them to do and be gone? It's a worldwide conspiracy to make me be polite when I don't want to be.”

“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!”

“Into every sunny life a little rain must fall.”

“I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.”

“if only my whole life could be words and music, if only everything else could slip away.”

“Doing nothing is opting for the sweetness of stillness… Instead of fighting with that which you cannot control, you might as well just see it through…”

“And she keeps saying, how can you do this to me?

And i want to scream, what do you mean, how can I do this to you? Aren't we confusing our pronouns here? The question, really, is How could I do this to myself?”

“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.”

“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.”

“The measure of mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job.”

“When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.”

“As someone very sagely said during the parricide trials of the Menendez Brothers: anytime your kids kill you, you are at least partly to blame.”

“Banned! My eyes light up, I think I see stars. Anything that has been banned by anyone must be something I’d like.”

“That's what it's like in my head all the time, constant snow, constant weather patterns of all sorts - blizzards, cyclones.”

“Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?”

“I am sick of the girl who cries 'wolf' all the time. Even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm”

“They have no idea what a bottomless pit of misery I am.”

“I come from a family of screamers. If they are trying to express any emotion or idea beyond pass the salt, it comes in shrieks.”