Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

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.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

It was just very interesting to me that certain types of women inspire people's imagination, and all of them were very difficult women.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

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.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

I admire Bruce Springsteen because he's a heroic person who has lots of integrity and has this incredible body of work that is so vital.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

I am a hopeless, shameless flirt.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

My life's actually been quite dull; it's not all that glamorous.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

All I do is go to the movies.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Everything good takes a great amount of effort. Like, things went wrong with 'Prozac Nation' so much, and it went through so many rejections and incarnations, but I felt so much that it needed to exist. But if I hadn't been so persistent and insistent, it wouldn't have happened.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

It's like Samson and Delilah: watch your back, because trouble could be the person you're sleeping with.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Feminism is a good venue for getting yourself across as much as for getting your point across.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and yet if either he or Bob Dylan had to be erased from the world's hard drive, I would save Bob Dylan's work for sure - he's the greater talent, and by leaps and bounds and skyscrapers and rocket blasts. But Bob Dylan is an alien to his public.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

My imagination, my ability to understand the way love and people grow over time, how passion can surprise and renew, utterly failed me.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

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.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Am I worried people will say I'm repeating myself? Sure. One thought I had was to publish it as a novel but eventually I just decided to do what I wanted to do.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

I wish I were shyly, quietly intriguing, like Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, like someone French and fashionable who knows how to twirl her ladylike locks just so and walk adroitly on kitten heels, who is all gesture and whisper - but I am unfortunately forward and forthright: When I am interested in a man, he absolutely knows it.

Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Sometimes I wish that there were a way to let people know that just because I live in a world without rules, and in a life that is lawless, doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt so bad the morning after.