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50 Quotes That Help Us Understand Depression Is a Flaw In Chemistry Not Character

It's time to stop glorifying depression.
Holly Riordan
July 14, 2016
“Hollowness: that I understand. I'm starting to believe that there isn't anything you can do to fix it. That's what I've taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Emptiness, Depression, therapy
“I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Control, Depression, Life
“'When did you become so weak?’ I don’t know. I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Weakness, strength, Life
“I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough for that.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Depression, self-harm, Bravery
“I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Life, Depression, Acting, Living
“I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Depression, Sorrow
“And I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away.”
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Tagged: Pain, Numb, Life
“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
Tagged: completeness, Emptiness, Depression
“I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)
Tagged: Emptiness, Depression, Chaos
“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
Tagged: Depression, nightmares, Sleeping
“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
— Laurell K. Hamilton, A Shiver of Light (A Merry Gentry Novel)
Tagged: wounds, Depression, Pain
“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.”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Tagged: Depression, Survival, humans
“Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving.”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Tagged: Friends, Depression, Understanding, Love
“There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.”
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees: A Novel
Tagged: Depression, Sadness, cancer
“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Tagged: Depression, Relaxation, cures
“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.”
— Stephen Fry, More Fool Me: A Memoir
Tagged: Depression, Questions, Friendship
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’”
— C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Tagged: Pain, Heartbroken, mental pain, physical pain, Depression
“That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Tagged: Life, Pain, purpose
“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome.”
— Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Tagged: Depression, Divorce, Feelings
“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
— Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Tagged: Depression, broken, Life
“You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective. It just means you're human.”
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Tagged: depressed, humans, resilient, Depression, Being human, Flaws
“If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Tagged: Depression, Survival, Suffering
“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.”
— J.K. Rowling, The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon
Tagged: Depression, Sadness, Feelings
“It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”
— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
Tagged: Pain, Suffering, disease, Depression
“I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”
— D.D. Barant, Dying Bites (Bloodhound Files) by D. D. Barant (2012-06-29)
Tagged: Guilt, Self-Loathing, Depression
“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.”
— Amit Ray, OM Chanting and Meditation
Tagged: Anxiety, Depression, live in the moment
“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Tagged: Depression, smiling, pretending
“Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
Tagged: Depression, coping, Survival
“Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent.”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Tagged: Mental Illness, Depression, Pills, cures
“I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colors and shades I knew existed.”
— Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits
Tagged: World, Life, Depression