When he's lecturing to students, he says, there are times when he'll arrive at the end of the sentence and not know if there's a sentence to follow. But Earley is quick to point out that he isn't a whiner, nor does he want to be considered a depression survivor. He accepts what he's been given to work with in life. I think creative people are missing an emotional membrane that everybody else has. Because that membrane is missing, it allows the creative stuff to go out, but also the bad stuff to go in.
Nothing is free.
If it wasn't for depression, as ambitious and as arrogant as I can be, I could have become a nightmare of a writer stereotype. Being depressed over the years has just burned off a lot of crap, particularly arrogance. After all, it's not hard to be humble when you can't get off the couch. I don't take things for granted so much anymore. There's no guarantee that I'll ever write another word.