Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came do….

There was a point when I was 15 or 16 that I realized that my father wanted me to be a loner. I decided, 'It's okay to be an introvert, but I don't w….

Colds, ulcers, flu, and cancer are things we get. Schizophrenia is something we are..

And if you're lucky enough to survive going crazy and get back to the point where you can pass for normal, it builds a question into the rest of your….

Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on….

Having their feelings make sense is how people get their kicks..

Are people who have been crazy held to unfair standards?Of course, but it's not in your best interest to complain. If you're paranoid and people are ….

Most adults have forgotten what they had to do to survive childhood..

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts..

We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is..

Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?.

Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all..

With mental illness the trick is to not take your feelings so seriously; you’re zooming in and zooming away from things that go from being too import….

The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I….

What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly d….

Life for the unwell is discontinuous and unpredictable. Things just come out of nowhere. People try but mostly do a lousy job of taking care of you..

I don't think the people today who start hearing voices, stop eating and sleeping, and run amuck are likely to get good treatment. Having more knowle….

The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thinking hard and reading hard and writing hard and ….

Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in an….

None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick..

I'm not an expert on the Middle East or terrorism or the use of military force or politics. It's all I can do to know a little bit about how to help ….