Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.

Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting

I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.

Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.

One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.

Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.

You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.

The tendency to turn human judgements into divine commands turns religion into one of the most dangerous forces in the world.

Destroy all the barriers inside you and accept everyone with love. We are in each other all along. Be nonjudgmental but be loving. Find the perfection in imperfection and be happy.

Every decision you ever make has its own consequences. Freedom is not the issue. You have freedom to do what you want, you just cannot do it and not pay the price for it.

It's hard to catch up when you are running second in a race with time.

The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps.

I personally just love movies about the creative process.

Divorce is brutal and horrible and... you have to actively work to get your life back on track.

I learned very quickly that the hard thing in life is to make good films. Technically, filmmaking is the camera and the actor telling the story and that's what I'm more interested in doing.

He who loves not lives not.

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.