c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
As long as everyone thinks you’re a cutter or tried to commit suicide you’ll always be on the outs.
— Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits
I'm sorry to say it, but it was hard on me to see life continue all around.
— Diet Eman, Things We Couldn't Say
We are all damaged. We have all been hurt. We have all had to learn painful lessons. We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice or misfortune. All of life is a process of recovery that never ends. We each must find ways to accept and move through the pain and to pick ourselves back up. For each pang of grief, depression, doubt or despair there is an inverse toward renewal coming to you in time. Each tragedy is an announcement that some good will indeed come in time. Be patient with yourself.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
for a moment, she let herself be defeated, wished herself not exactly annihilation but into a temporary absense, into being nowhere and no one just for a little while.
— Sue Saliba, Alaska
Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb.
— Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me;Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths allBolted against me.Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers,Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentenceWorse than Abiram's.Him the vindictive rod of angry JusticeSent quick and howling to the centre headlong;I, fed with judgement, in a fleshy tomb, amBuried above ground.
— William Cowper, The Poetical Works Of William Cowper
He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.
— Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
Jam on a winter took away the blue devils. It was like tasting summer. 
— Sandra Dallas
I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying...nameless....
— M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
I closed the door. Other people got husbands and children
—  I got a bag of lettuce. I hurled myself on the floor and sobbed. The worst thing about trying to get myself undepressed were the days when it seemed like I hadn’t made any progress at all.
I keep moving ahead, as always, knowing deep down inside that I am a good person and that I am worthy of a good life.
— Jonathan Harnisch
So ask me if I am alright.'I’m fine; I’m always fine.'You see this look in my eyes.'No, I’m fine. I am always fine.'There is a corpse behind my smile.'Listen, I am fine. Always, always fine as fine can be.''Are you okay?''I am more than okay. I am more than fine. I am wonderful!
— Emma Rose Kraus, A Blue One
Saying those words made a sharp, quick panic rise up in her, an aching pain that had her throat closing. “You left me,” she repeated. Maybe it was only out of blind terror at the abyss opening up again around her, but she whispered, “I have no one left. No one.
— Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire
Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds.
— Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
Nothing mitigates the throes of depression like a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce and grated parmasan cheese, with a good fresh bread to wipe up.
— Paul Clayton
I’m busy saving everybody else when I can’t even save myself
— Rajesh
Serotonin, the "feel-good" brain chemical that is boosted by Prozac, depends on magnesium for its production and function.
— Carolyn Dean, The Magnesium Miracle
Eventually sinking into despair, [Heinrich von Kleist] shot himself in 1811 as part of a suicide pact made with a woman suffering from incurable cancer.
— Nicholas Tucker, Darkness Visible: Inside the World of Philip Pullman
manic depression is the result of the sum of repetitiveness in life and expecting a different result.
— Pieter Swaenepoel
Author wonders whether God's proclamation of His natural mastery when appearing to Job might be about restoring a sense of wonder to world-weary man as much as humbling him.
— Mark Buchanan, The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God
Dealing with depression isn't about trying to run away from the feeling
—  it's about learning to walk alongside it.
If I were another person, I go on, I wouldn’t want to deal with me, I don’t want to deal with me, It’s so hopeless, I want out of this life. I really do. I keep thinking that if I could just get a grip of myself, I could be all right again. I keep thinking I’m driving myself crazy, but I swear, I swear to God, I have no control. It’s so awful, It’s like some demons have taken over my mind. And nobody believes me, Everybody thinks I could be better if I wanted to. But I can’t be the old Lizzy anymore, I can’t be myself anymore, I mean, actually, I am being myself right now and it’s horrible.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.
— James     Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. ‘One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.
— James     Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel
He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.
— Alice Hoffman, The Third Angel
…she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because we have to. We live in the shadow of every neighborhood. We own little corner stores, live in run-down apartments that get too little light, and walk the same streets day after day. We spend our afternoons gazing lazily out of windows. Somnambulists, all of us. Someone else said it better: we wake to sleep and sleep to wake.
— Dinaw Mengestu, Children of the Revolution
Listen, Harper. I realize how hard this is for you."A flash of anger heats up in my chest. She doesn't understand. She can't. If she did, she'd leave me alone instead of trying to force me to talk about this.
— Hannah Harrington, Saving June
The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
Discouragement is the illegitimate child of false expectations! Loyd Ogilive
— Lane Adams, The Incredible Patience of God: Along the Road to Spiritual Maturity
And then depression set in....
— Bill Murray
That there is in this world neither brains, nor goodness, nor good sense, but only brute force. Bloodshed. Starvation. Death. That there was not the slightest hope not even a glimmer of hope, of justice being done. It would never happen. No one would ever do it. The world was just one big Babi Yar. And there two great forces had come up against each other and were striking against each other like hammer and anvil, and the wretched people were in between, with no way out; each individual wanted only to live and not be maltreated, to have something to eat, and yet they howled and screamed and in their fear they were grabbing at each other’s throats, while I, little blob of watery jelly, was sitting in the midst of this dark world. Why? What for? Who had done it all? There was nothing, after all, to hope for! Winter. Night.
— Anatoly Kuznetsov, Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel
But a whole bottle was what made me feel dead inside. And it worked, all the days stress was gone and I was able to live without the gigantic knot in my stomach. Without the boulders weighing down my shoulders.
— Holly Hood, Prison of Paradise
Depression is partly a nocebo effect, in the sense that it can be produced by negative exceptions about oneself and the world. The way in which these negative expectations develop and produce their negative effects provides some clues as to how they can be reversed. Expectancy effects grow, feeding upon themselves. One reason this happens is that our subjective states - our feelings, our moods and sensations - are in constant flux, changing from day to day and from moment to moment. The effects of these fluctuations depend on how we interpret them, and our interpretations depend on our beliefs and expectations. When we expect to feel worse, we tend to notice random small negative changes and interpret them as evidence that we are in fact getting worse. This interpretation makes us actually feel worse, and it strengthens the belief that we are getting worse, leading to a vicious cycle in which our expectations and negative emotions feed on each other, cascading into a full-blown depressive episode. .. Positive expectancies have the opposite effect. They can set in motion a begin cycle, in which random fluctuations in mood and well being are interpreted as evidence of treatment effectiveness, thereby instilling a further sense of hope and countering the feeling of hopelessness that are so central to clinical depression.
— Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
Nothing is quite as depressing as depression.
— Claire Weekes, Pass Through Panic: Freeing Yourself from Anxiety and Fear
The results of decades of neurotransmitter-depletion studies point to one inescapable conclusion: low levels or serotonin, norepinephrine or dopamine do not cause depression. here is how the authors of the most complete meta-analysis of serotonin-depletion studies summarized the data: "Although previously the monoamine systems were considered to be responsible for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), the available evidence to date does not support a direct causal relationship with MDD. There is no simple direct correlation of serotonin or norepinephrine levels in the brain and mood.' In other words, after a half-century of research, the chemical-imbalance hypothesis as promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture SSRIs and other antidepressants is not only with clear and consistent support, but has been disproved by experimental evidence.
— Irving Kirsch, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
I was sure that if I could just scale this fortress I would reach a height with a sunny blue sky and fresh air. I would stand there and experience myself as redeemable rather than ruined. I had no idea what kind of animal I was facing.If you had suggested to me at the time that my problems were due to some faulty wiring, some chemistry experiment gone wrong in my brain, I'd have said you were suggesting that I not take responsibility for my own choices. Now I know I was wrong. Now when I'm haunted by the specter of depression, I recognize it for what it is. I don't systematically dismantle my life every time depression pops out from behind a tree. But at that time, I was sure it was fixable if the world would just change faster, or if I would.
— Jillian Lauren, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
Did I miss the denial, anger, and bargaining phases, or did you leap straight to depression?
— Kat Lowe, Dream Cat
He is the same chap who informed me that there are unusually high numbers of Mennonites who suffer from depression but nobody knows why. I said, Well, thank you for that! As cheerfully as if I was accepting a plate of homemade Christmas cookies from one of my students.
— Miriam Toews, Swing Low
I wonder Pa went so easy. I wonder Grampa didn' kill nobody. Nobody never tol' Grampa where to put his feet. An' Ma ain't nobody you can push aroun' neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time 'cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han', an' the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an' she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn' even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn't nothing but a pair of legs in her han'. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin'.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful. Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Graves' bull. Ever'body was out but Elsie Graves, and Elsie wasn't bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin' red an' he couldn't even talk. Elsie says, 'I know what you come for; the bull's out in back a the barn.' Well, they took the heifer out there an' Willy an' Elsie sat on the fence to watch. Purty soon Willy got feelin' purty fly. Elsie looks over an' says, like she don't know, 'What's a matter, Willy?' Willy's so randy, he can't hardly set still. 'By God,' he says, 'by God, I wisht I was a-doin' that!' Elsie says, 'Why not, WIlly? It's your heifer.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Old Tom giggled, "Fooled ya, huh, Ma? We aimed to fool ya, and we done it. Jus' stood there like a hammered sheep. Wisht Grampa'd been here to see. Looked like somebody'd beat ya between the eyes with a sledge. Grampa would a whacked 'imself so hard he'd a throwed his hip out–like he done when he seen Al take a shot at that grea' big airship the army got. Tommy, it come over one day, half a mile big, an' Al gets the thirty-thirty and blazes away at her. Grampa yells, 'Don't shoot no fledglin's, Al; wait till a growed-up one goes over,' an' then he whacked 'imself an' throwed his hip out.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
I was a flower that bloomed and sparked way too fast. He took me in ’cause I was pretty in all kinds of colors but way too soon I stood on his table sad and dried up. I forgot to nourish myself and the sun never shone from my sky.
— Charlotte Eriksson
People think being depressed is just being tired and lazy. It isn't. It's more like being dead when you're still breathing.
— Edward Averett, Cameron and the Girls
My unfurling began with stillness. Instead of sprinting from terror or trying to karate chop the emptiness away, I set out a welcome mat. If I was going to be mad, I might as well acquaint myself with madness. It was an open house for monsters and I turned none away. I sat breathing in and out, sometimes for hours, as a parade of pronged horns, sharp claws, and hungry jaws moved past, invisible bodies breathing hot against my neck. (p. 240)
— Clara Bensen, No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering
How could death not be appealing, when the only thing that gave him comfort in life was being unconscious?
— Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
the capture the rapture the rupture of a soula solo symphony
— Sarah Kane
2.	We experience bouts of depressions at times. Those are the times when we feel that we just want to lie low or become invisible. There’s nothing wrong in that. We are after all human beings. But to remain in that state forever is not advisable. Get up, get over it, pick up your life and start living once again. You have it in you, so chin up and cheer up.
— Latika Teotia
weltschmerz. it's the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be
— John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
When a bad experience shakes your faith  in humanity, hold those depressing thoughts and ask yourself. 1. How many things in life have you achieved  Without anyone’s help ? I can almost guarantee none. The help may be in terms of an action, an advise, direction or mere presence. 2. How many times has someone just come in  from nowhere in your time of need and said  or done just what you needed at that moment.Each one of us is an angel for someone. Let's be that angel more often.
— Drishti Bablani
No, no, no, no. Don't get carried away, man. One thaw is not the summer.
— Andrea Levy, Small Island
My days have turned into strugglesMy weeks into fightsMy months into battlesMy years, a warIt’s becoming a lifetime of desperationA lifetime of sorrowA lifetime of emptinessA lifeless timeA timeless life
— Evy Michaels
I think it would be best if, when you’re having suicidal thoughts of stabbing yourself, that you try to think of rainbows instead.”“Rainbows?” Ann said hugging a pillow.“Yeah,” Lisa said, standing back to look at her wall art. “Ya know—happy, bright, refreshing, the calm after the storm, God’s gift to the earth.”“Or the aliens’ gift,” Ann added.“Course,” Lisa agreed. “Can’t rule that out.
— Sage Steadman, Ann, Not Annie
Allow your mind to be still and rest in His presence.
— Rachel K Kidder, Healing Grace Scripture Journal: 30 Day Bible Study Journal for Emotional Healing
Much of his time at Oxford passed by his own account under a dark cloud of listlessness and depression. He was dismayed by the undergraduates' relentless snobbery and unremitting emphasis on money.
— Hilary Spurling, Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time
She was tranquil, but it was with the quietness of exhausted grief, not of resignation; and she looked back upon the past, and awaited the future, with a kind of out-breathed despair.
— Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents. a Romance. by Ann Radcliffe, ... in Three Volumes. ... the Second Edition. Volume 1 of 3
I ask for tons of notebooks for my birthday, the ones with college ruled lines, and I carry them with me, pretend they're my friends, and write anything that comes to mind. Something about my stories makes me happy, allows me to drift away a bit.
— Kenny Porpora, The Autumn Balloon
It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.
— Sinclair Ross, As for Me and My House
I looked in the mirror and realized that I was already dead. I let you kill me one piece at a time, starting when I was, what? Eight years old? Nine? You killed yourself and then you came after us.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Twisted
Closeness eases the anxiety and depression of believing that no one really cares about you. It softens the frustration and anger that come with feeling that no one understands you. Suddenly, others become available to us. Suddenly, we feel better inside.
— Kira Asatryan, Stop Being Lonely: Three Simple Steps to Developing Close Friendships and Deep Relationships
Proshka was a man of self-esteem. He considered himself a cut above the rest, and had a degree of personal pride. His spell in prison was a humiliating experience for him. No longer could he strut with pride before his fellows, and his spirits sank at once.Proshka went home from prison embittered not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich as against the whole world.Everyone said the same thing: after he came out of prison, Proshka went to pieces. He grew too lazy to work, took to drink, and was soon caught stealing clothes from the trademan's wife. Once again he ended up in prison.
— Leo Tolstoy, The Forged Coupon
What I do know is that when a person is first asked to explain what is wrong, they may find it almost impossible to articulate exactly what the problem is. They may not yet have matched words to the feelings they can sense in the hidden rooms of their mind. They may still have no clear ideas about the "what", "why" or "how" relating to the origins of their difficulties. Instead of words, their angst may be expressed in behaviour which may be hard for them, or anyone else, to make sense of and can manifest itself as irritability, anger or withdrawal. Sometimes they will delay seeking help until they are in a state of crisis. It's not easy to ask; I struggled at first, too.
— Linda Gask, The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist's Memoir of Depression
Perhaps my depression coincided with the start of every academic year and the subsequent increase in my workload. Or maybe there was a more biological explanation linked to the fact that I, like many people with depressed mood, find the absence of light at these latitudes intolerable in the winter months. I didn't know the answer - I still don't. This is who I am. I cope most of the time; I am well for months, sometimes even for more than a year; but there are recurring periods in my life when the world seems a darker, more hostile and unforgiving place. I am a person who gets depressed.
— Linda Gask, The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist's Memoir of Depression
Yet, I believe that my experience of depression has helped me to be a more humane and understanding therapist. Psychiatrists get depressed too, more often than other doctors. Being an expert in depression doesn't confer any immunity from it and I am aware that I don't have all the answers.
— Linda Gask, The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist's Memoir of Depression
When people start getting depressed there’s just no end to it—things just seem to get worse and worse.
— Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep
We met in a school elevator, and he could tell from the way I spoke that we had some sadness in common.
— Kenny Porpora, The Autumn Balloon
Like you're taking the universe by thethroat and saying, look, I know Ican never be as big as you, but yousure as hell can't stop me from trying.Like taking the sadness and wringingit out and saying, look, I knowyou won't leave me alone, but yousure as hell can't stop me living.
— Darshana Suresh, Howling at the Moon
Sadness wasn't a disease you could catch, as far as I know, but from what I seen, people treated it like it was.
— L M Bryski, Book of Birds
In my community, mental health isn't taken seriously enough. Therapy is replaced by prayer. Tears are a sign of weakness. When you are different, you are told to change. And really, what does that do? It isolates desperate, vulnerable people and creates victims.
— Frida R., Blossom's Wine Bar
My brain, having been suspended in a state of hyper-vigilance for such a long time, just packed in and said 'No more, your job now is to lie on the sofa incredibly still and just work on evaporating, you useless towel'. And so I did.
— Ruby Elliot, It's All Absolutely Fine
Because the silence is exhausting and isolating in a way it needn't be.
— Ruby Elliot, It's All Absolutely Fine
A tin of milk is not the same as a milk tin. You are not always the same as others perceive you. The label of a tin of milk is not all that important as compared to the milk in the tin. So many people label others as if the ‘true milk’ in them is equal to the label. We must not always equate the outward man to the inner man. Guard your milk! The only way people can destroy your milk is their ability to punch a hole in ‘the tin’ and after they have done that, they can have reasons to speak about how ‘expired your milk is’. Dare to preserve your milk, no matter how people label you! Keep doing what you need to do as a living sacrifice to the Sovereign Lord God, and one day, they that label you wrongly shall come to a realization how they have their own labels. Stay focused! Move with the right reasons!Two people were asked to go and pick a tin of milk without first touching it. The first tin was well labeled, but without any liquid in it. The second was without a label, but with milk in it. When the two men got to where the tins were, one was quick to pick the one with the label, leaving the other for his friend. Then they came to him who sent them and he asked them, ‘I asked you to go for a tin of milk, where is it?’ the one who took the tin without the milk was quick to stretch his hand, but their sender said to him, ‘a tin of milk is not just a tin labeled a tin of milk, but a tin with milk’.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
A human being can only endure depression up to a certain point; when this point of saturation is reached it becomes necessary for him to discover some element of pleasure, no matter how humble or on how low a level, in his environment if he is to go on living at all. In my case these insignificant birds with their subdued colourings have provided just sufficient distraction to keep me from total despair. Each day I find myself spending longer and longer at the window watching their flights, their quarrels, their mouse-quick flutterings, their miniature feuds and alliances. Curiously enough, it is only when I am standing in front of the window that I feel any sense of security. While I am watching the birds I believe that I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.
— Anna Kavan, Asylum Piece
I can understand why some people might look at me and say, 'What's she got to be depressed about?' I get that a lot in Britain, where mental health issues seem to be a big taboo.
— Natalie Imbruglia
And I did nothing, nothing but try to hide from the horror of dying." He stopped, for saying the truth aloud was unendurable. It was not shame that stopped him, but fear, the same fear. He knew now why this tranquil life in sea and sunlight on the rafts seemed to him like an after-life or a dream, unreal. It was because he knew in his heart that reality was empty: without life or warmth or color or sound: without meaning. There were no heights or depths. All this lovely play of form and light and color on the sea and in the eyes of men, was no more than that, a playing of illusions on the shallow void.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, The Reprieve
There’s a weight in the room now, a remembrance of childhood. It sinks like a stone, or a heart, or my weight on a good day.
— Kris Kidd, Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex
Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse.Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.
— Geoffrey Miller
Another piano falls, but this time it’s me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.
— Kris Kidd, Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex
I've come to realize that hunger feels more like home than any tangible structure ever has, or probably ever will. I know now that creating absence is my way of coping with absence.
— Kris Kidd
There is stability in self-destruction, in prolonging sadness as a means of escaping abstractions like happiness. Rock bottom is a surprisingly comfortable place to lay your head. Looking up from the depths of another low often seems a lot safer than wondering when you'll fall again. Falling feels awful.I'd rather fucking fly.
— Kris Kidd
Coming down for the thousandth time, I'm perched on the precipice of a billion broken promises. I'm speeding through the intersections of my own broken heartstrings, blowing red lights and ignoring red flags. I'm thinking, 'history repeats itself.' I'm wondering why. The world outside is still happening also.
— Kris Kidd
Regret, albeit raw and relentless, is almost always unremarkable.
— Kris Kidd
I’ve always wanted to be the sort of boy who does the right thing without having to think about it first, the kind of boy who makes his bed every morning and wears his mouth like a vase for words of kindness and simplicity. My agents keep telling me I’m too bruised to play the part. They have no idea how hard it is to make my bed when I’m constantly sleeping in yours, how difficult it is to keep my body from bruising when I’m almost always on my knees, making room in my vase for you, and watching while you text all the boys who are up for the role.
— Kris Kidd, Return to Sender
Crashing through windows I thought were open doors. Apologizing for the mess. Rationalizing my behavior in metaphors you’ll simply never understand. Learning to accept defeat. Watching you walk away from me, from us, from all of this, using every door I missed. Begging, "Please don’t leave me now, I killed those boys to make you love me.
— Kris Kidd, Return to Sender
Fucking fixes nothing, but certain feelings are unavoidable.
— Kris Kidd, Return to Sender
Sometimes, when I’m chain smoking on the balcony and feeling like shit (which happens more often than I’d like to admit), I let go of a lit cigarette just to see if the ember will outlast the fall.It rarely does.
— Kris Kidd, Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex
February falls on top of me like a cartoon piano. I reek of champagne, come, and CK One.
— Kris Kidd, Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex
I just want to get away from me.
— Kris Kidd
There are rules you've gotta follow when you fuck to forget. A body's only a temple if and when you treat it like one, but a heart can still break even if you never put it together properly in the first place.
— Kris Kidd
And then he’s somewhere inside of me, each thrust rattling my ribcage like a bottle of pills. I’m somewhere outside of myself, thinking about lust— about my slutty white sheets and all the men who like to hide in them.
— Kris Kidd, Split Lips: Stories About Love & Sex
A drop in the bucket, a tear in the ocean, you’ve been treading cold water, memorizing the motion just to stay afloat.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
And I guess at the end of the day, you’re just amazed that I can still stand, and I’m just amazed that I can stand still.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
It’s so hard not to be fascinated by the broken, to remember that a boy with a sad smile and a pretty face is not the boy that you should fall in love with.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
Suicide. It's a very powerful word. I remember as a little girl, I had it all, a perfect family, a perfect life. 16 years go by and that small little girl grew. Her life drastically changed. Her mother was never home, she grew up raising her sisters, her father... lets not even talk about him. He was just a bad man. So she learned she can only trust herself, she met a male online and he made her feel normal once again, he made her depression, bipolar disorder and all her problems seem fake for a moment. Two years pass, shit happens they are no longer in speaking terms, 3 days later she is ready to die, she had decided to troll on a game once more before she killed herself, where she met a girl who 8 months later would be her best friend forever and always. This girl had changed her life in ways not even imaginable. Then she meets another male who 4 months later would be a cause of many suicide attempts, she finally got enough courage to leave him, then later she met another male.. it was hard at first, he ran from problems, but he supposedly got his shit together.. and now we are "dating." And I still get my suicide thoughts, I'm still depressed, I'm still bipolar, I'm still dying slowly,, etc...
— Brooke
Constantly downcast leads to the death bed.
— Veronica Purcell
People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was.
— Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen
Then I drop to my knees because I can't find a decent enough reason not to, because reluctance rarely stands a chance against repeated behavior.
— Kris Kidd
Two sad eyes and one skanky smile, I practically pulse with the promise of promiscuity. I'm easy to catch, but too slippery to hold onto. Men love a challenge if the prize is guaranteed. I know how to start a fight while deepthroating a white flag.
— Kris Kidd
Do something with your one life, instead of following others. While just watching your one life pass you by.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett
If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.
— Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Dissociation is numbness and nothingness; it is a feeling of being lost; it is floating on a cloud that threatens to suffocate; it is automatic speech and action without awareness or control; it is looking at the world and blinking to try to remove the blurry fog; it is hearing and seeing the immediate world and simultaneously feeling very far away; it is raw fear; it is unfamiliarity in familiar places; it is possession; it is being haunted everyday by unknown monsters that can be felt but not seen (at least not by others); it is looking in the mirror and not knowing who is looking back; it is fantasy and imagination; and, above all else, it is survival. Dissociation is all of these things and none of them at once.
— Noel Hunter
She wondered how many towns like this existed all over the country?Bucolic scenery on the outside, with its own private soap operas, gossips and hells on the inside. She wondered if the suburbs in huge cities were merely a collection of small towns, piled on top of each other and each place was ultimately the same. The thought struck her as exceedingly depressing. However, her spirits were not in their best shape.
— Jaime Allison Parker
Sometimes it can be as brutally overwhelming as a tidal wave flooding every orifice, the suffocation, the pressure, the immensity of this damnable depression like an ocean, unsurmountable. It swallows me whole and gnaws at my very bones. It floods me over and over, drowning me over and over... It is a torturous broken record player with a scratched disc on repeat, the wailing disrupting any possible good remaining after the tsunami. It wails and wails inside my ribcage and inside my skull. I cannot make it stop.
— Moonshine Noire
I said I was "just tired", but I never told you what I was tired of.
— Art Hero
I did not want to sit on the roof, though I was also aware that if I didn’t allow myself the relief of considering suicide, I would soon explode from within and commit suicide. I felt the fatal tentacles of this despair wrapping themselves around my arms and legs. Soon they would hold the fingers I would need to take the right pills or to pull the trigger, and when I had died, they would be the only motion left. I knew that the voice of reason (“For heaven’s sake, just go downstairs!”) was the voice of reason, but I also knew that by reason I would deny all the poison within me, and I felt already some strange despairing ecstasy at the thought of the end. If only I had been disposable like yesterday’s paper! I would have thrown myself away so quietly then and been glad of the absence, glad in the grave if that was the only place that could allow some gladness.
— Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Days go by when I do nothing but underline the damp edge of myself.
— Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems
I decided that if I didn't allow myself to fall asleep, then I wouldn't have to wake up again and despair.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
There really isn't much wrong with me,' I say, 'it's just that, well, I'm not like other people; I don't want the things they want. And this is not right, I mean, in other people's eyes, and I feel as though they feel they are duty-bound to normalise me, that it isn't okay just to not want the things they want, you know?
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
So it's as if,' I say, 'I'm okay in my own bones, but I know that my bones aren't living up to other people's version of what a life should be, and I feel a little crushed by that, to be honest, a little confused as to how to align the two things: to be an acceptable member of society but to be able to be my own bones both at once.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
But I know I will do neither; nothing. I have all the time in the world, and yet, I can't be bothered.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
It happens so seldom; I must catch and keep this slender yearning, a rare beetle in a jam-jar trap. But mustering will is not the same as wanting. I lie in the garden and think about all the footsteps between my body on the grass and my pencil-case and notebook on the table in the sun room. All the muscles I have to flex and relax to get myself there.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
And yet, here I am. Perceiving everything that is wonderful to be proportionately difficult; everything that is possible an elaborate battle to achieve. My happy life was never enough for me. I always considered my time to be more precious than that of other people and almost every routine pursuit—equitable employment, domestic chores, friendship—unworthy of it. Now I see how this rebellion against ordinary happiness is the greatest vanity of them all.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
Sometimes, when I'm chain-smoking and feeling like shit (which happens more often than I'd like to admit), I let go of a lit cigarette just to see if the ember will outlast the fall.It rarely does.
— Kris Kidd
Another piano falls, but this time it's me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.
— Kris Kidd
There's a weight in the room now, a remembrance of childhood. It sinks like a stone, or a heart, or my weight on a good day.
— Kris Kidd
My desperation is deliberate. Despondency's a pheromone.
— Kris Kidd
And then he's somewhere inside of me, each thrust rattling my ribcage like a bottle of pills. I'm somewhere outside of myself, thinking about lust— about my slutty white sheets and all the men who like to hide in them.
— Kris Kidd
Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie--
— Michael  Anthony, Civilianized: A Young Veteran's Memoir
I sit up in bed slowly, feeling the disappointment trickle away like puddles after a rain shower.
— Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y
It is a perfectly normal side-effect for someone to have depression because he cannot move or function in his job. That is all that it is: a side-effect. Those with disabilities and debilitating illnesses probably have more to get depressed about than others.
— Dominic Hubbard
Like a deep sad noteplayed beneath the oceanwaving through the orbthe memories of youthe bittersweet echoesinfixed forever in my heart
— Pawan Mishra
Because that's the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don't want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It's mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.
— Stephanie Perkins, Lola and the Boy Next Door
It is actually okay to stop trying to solve the problem of feeling bad. In fact it is wise because our habitual ways of solving problems almost invariably wind up making things worse.
— Mark Williams, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
You shut your eyes to keep out the light because the light reminds you that you are alive
— P.A. Bitez
Mindfulness could also be described as "heartfulness" because it is really about a compassionate awareness.
— Mark Williams, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
I’ve often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that “normal” people also might never understand, and that’s what FURIOUSLY HAPPY is all about.
— Jenny  Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
I'll never amount to anything—well anything my parents want, so instead I’ll end up puking and drinking till I’m blind drunk, It’s funny my mother says I hurt myself to spite her but she doesn’t know I hurt myself because I am, I am, I am a writer.
— P.A. Bitez, Soft Tortures
She dreamed that somebody replaced her nerves with puppet strings. The unseen puppeteer resisted every move she made, and Nina was still ensnared when sunlight tickled her eyes open. For weeks, her actions lagged, leaden, as if cement thickened in her marrow, her skull, and her heart-bearing chest.Later, Nina learned the puppeteer’s name: Depression.
— Darcie Little Badger
He was always mindful of keeping his spirits in check lest they soar unreasonably high.
— Kevin  Purdy
Although the outward picture of depression is quite the opposite of that of grandiosity and has a quality that expresses the tragedy of the loss of self in a more obvious way, they have many points in common:-	The false self that has led to the loss of the potential true self -	A fragility of self-esteem because of a lack of confidence in one’s own feelings and wishes-	Perfectionism-	Denial of rejected feelings-	A preponderance of exploitative relationships-	An enormous fear of loss of love and therefore a great readiness to conform-	Split-off aggression-	Oversensitivity-	A readiness to feel shame and guilt-	Restlessness
— Alice MIller, The Drama of the gifted child
For how long would I be trapped in the condition of melancholy without going insane?
— Neda Aria
Existing is exhausting.I want to live - How to be
— P.A. Bitez, Soft Tortures
Depression is a physical illness, like bleeding from a wound that won’t close. You cannot fix it, it doesn’t heal.
— Gaia B. Amman, Sex-O-S: The Tragicomic Adventure of an Italian Surviving the First Time
Hey,.... bitch.... Sucker or whatever you are.... STOPP STARRRRINGGGG AT ME! It's so depressing!
— Deyth Banger
However, I must admit that keeping myself to myself has not always been comforting. At times, I seemed to suffer spells of depression and loneliness, longing to become healthy again; of going out and facing a world of injustices, of misery, of widespread indifference.
— Lawrence G. Taylor, Strangers In Another Country
What was wrong with
— Rhiannon Thomas, Long May She Reign
It was a gift. What did I do with it? Life didn't accumulate as I'd once imagined. I graduated from boarding school, two years of college. Persisted through the blank decade in Los Angeles. I buried first my mother, then my father. His hair gone wispy as a child's. I paid bills and bought groceries and got my eyes checked while the days crumbled away like debris from a cliff face. Life a continuous backing away from the edge.
— Emma Cline, The Girls
When I was a kid, I used to watch that show, sitting on the couch in my pajamas and wishing more than anything that one day I'd just change into this other person. I thought that would explain everything. You know, about why I felt so different. Then I'd find out that my mother was really an alien or that I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider as a baby and it would all be okay because I'd be able to fly and see through walls.. But it never happened. I just went on being me my whole life, until one day I realized that all those superheroes were doing was fighting themselves, and that getting to breathe underwater or shoot fire from your fingers didn't really make up for being screwed up in the first place. It was just the consolation prize - you got the great costume and the invisible jet for being a loser in everything else.
— Michael Thomas Ford, Suicide Notes