“...what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them.”

“People say to the mentally ill, ‘You know so many people think the world of you.’ But when they don’t like themselves they don’t notice anything. They don’t care about what people think of them. When you hate yourself, whatever people say it doesn’t make sense. ‘Why do they like me? Why do they care about me?’ Because you don’t care about yourself at all.”

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it”

“I think many people ill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.”

“I think that to be a good writer, you have to put yourself on the line, you have to think deeply about what is meaningful to you and you have to make a good-faith effort to speak from the integrity of your own deep experience.... People don't think about assessing what is the deepest narrative for them. I think that that's about 99 percent of the subject of literature.... Write from it.”

“You making jokes about my illness? Not funny. Me making jokes about my illness? Funny.”