You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl.

I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.

Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls

We turned us into wintergirls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

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 beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.

So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs.

In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.

Write about the emotions you fear the most.

Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

His was not the hatred that arises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the initial shock of anger and pain was over, a calculated thing that grew in a bloodless way.

But stones, too, can lie.

You can't move forward until you look back.

Art is not great. Music is not great. It's just that they tickle us. When one steadfastly refuses greatness - then and then only can the wonderful thing we call art be created.

Whether you are a business leader or political leader, you need people around you who are prepared to tell the truth.

I attract to my life whatever I give my attention, energy and focus to, whether positive or negative.

Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it's a grave mistake.

Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.

It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?

Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses.