“To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and ...”

“Minds have their own weather systems. You are in a hurricane. Hurricanes run out of energy eventually. Hold on.”

“The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a l...”

“MINDS ARE UNIQUE. They go wrong in unique ways. My mind went wrong in a slightly different way to how other minds go wrong. Our experience overlaps with other people's, but it is never exactly the ...”

“But it only takes a doubt. A drop of ink falls into a clear glass of water and clouds the whole thing. So the moment after I realised I wasn't perfectly well was the moment I realised I was still v...”

“What doesn't kill you very often makes you weaker. What doesn't kill you can leave you limping for the rest of your days. What doesn't kill you can make you scared to leave your house, or even your...”

“A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.”

“What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again.”

“Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you...”

“The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, whe...”

“I didn't realize there was a ranking." I said. "Sadie frowned. "What do you mean?" "A ranking," I said. "You know, what's crazier than what." "Oh, sure there is," Sadie said. She sat back in her ch...”

“I am forever engaged in a silent battle in my head over whether or not to lift the fork to my mouth, and when I talk myself into doing so, I taste only shame. I have an eating disorder.”

“Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more complet...”

“All this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontent”

“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”