Quotes from book
Prozac Nation

Prozac Nation

Elizabeth Wurtzel

Prozac Nation is a memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel published in 1994. The book describes the author's experiences with atypical depression, her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer. Prozac is a trade name for the antidepressant fluoxetine. Wurtzel originally titled the book I Hate Myself and I Want To Die but her editor convinced her otherwise. It ultimately carried the subtitle Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir.

“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 book Prozac Nation

Source: 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 book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

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

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Hemingway has his classic moment in "The Sun Also Rises" when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, "Gradually, then suddenly." That's how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you're gonna live.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Variant: There is a classic moment in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” When someone asks how I lost my mind, that’s all I can say too.
Source: 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 book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“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.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“How can you hide from what never goes away? --Heraclitus”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“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.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

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

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

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

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“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.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: 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.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“… if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

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