«I drink to stay warm, and to kill selected memories...»

«The story the Leavers have been enacting for the past three million years isn?t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn?t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. This is what you?ll find if you go among them. They?re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not having a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make lives worth living. And ? I repeat ? this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they?re innately noble. This is simply because they?re enacting a story that works well for people ? a story that worked well for three million years and that still works well where the Takers haven?t yet managed to stamp it out.»

«If depression is creeping up and must be faced, learn something about the nature of the beast: You may escape without a mauling.»

«I start to feel like I can?t maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don?t know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don?t know the answer, I know only that I can?t. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I?ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.»

«A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work.»

«...Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling...People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.»

«I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don't want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus - a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.»

«Depression is nourished by a lifetime of ungrieved and unforgiven hurts»

«Depression is the inability to construct a future»

«I never asked you to earn me. I want only that you should need me. Your path is not one of merit. Bring the recurring desires of your mind to me, every time they emerge. They cannot shock me, for I willed them! Bring me your confusion, your fear, your craving, your anxiety, your inability to love the world, your hesitation to serve, your jealousy, all the deficiencies that defy your spiritual disciplines.»