“The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us”

“Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object.”

“Jumping to conclusions rarely gets us anywhere we want to be.”

“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”from her essay, On Being Ill”

“Sometimes I think depression should be called the coping illness. So many of us struggle on, not daring or knowing how to ask for help. More of us, terribly, go undiagnosed.”

“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”