“Yesterday was my last day at work. My coworkers were so sad they all pitched in and bought me a one-way ticket to Seattle, and a bottle of cyanide in case I get thirsty.”

“I forgot my purse of laughter when I dressed this mornin'," she told me. "Have you not bought anythin' the last few days? Prices have gone up. Pay or starve, it's all one to me.”

“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.”

“I get so sad that sad gets to be.So scared that all my feelings they up and leave me. I got so city girl on you. I go so crazy I don't know what to do.”

“I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy questions - and here I was getting the ax again. It mad me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates - I wanted racing skates and she bought me hockey - but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.”

“But on my worst days, which are rare and of which this is one, I can get down so low that the bottom seems to be where I belong. I don't even want to look for a way up. I suppose surrender to sadness is a sin, though my current sadness is not a black depression but is instead a sorrow like a long moody twilight.”