The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came al….

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influe….

Further, Dr. Gold said with a straight face, the pill at optimum dosage could have the side effect of impotence. Until that moment, although I'd had ….

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay..

When, in the autumn of 1947, I was fired from the first and only job I have ever held, I wanted one thing out of life: to become a writer..

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading..

[However], the sufferer from depression has no option, and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable ….

The mornings themselves were becoming bad now as I wandered about lethargic, following my synthetic sleep, but afternoons were still the worst, beg….

What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jer….

I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil..

Writing is a form of self-flagellation..

Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the brink..

we each devise our means of escape from the intolerable..

Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word - life..

The writer's duty is to keep on writing..

Through the healing process of time-and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases-most people survive depression which may be its….

In the absence of hope we must still struggle to survive, and so we do-by the skin of our teeth..

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul..

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of ph….

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writi….

my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unna….