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

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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 RiordanJuly 14, 2016

Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there's nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.

— Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes

Depression beauty literary mysterious

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The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.

— Pete Wentz, Hyperbole and a Half

Depression addictive Guilt Happiness

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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

Pain Suffering disease Depression

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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

Emptiness Depression therapy

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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

completeness Emptiness Depression

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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

Depression Sadness Feelings

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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

Depression Sorrow

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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

Depression Questions Friendship

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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

Depression nightmares Sleeping

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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)

wounds Depression Pain

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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

Depression Survival humans

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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

Friends Depression Understanding Love

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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

Depression Sadness cancer

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Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Depression Relaxation cures

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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)

Emptiness Depression Chaos

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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

Depression Divorce Feelings

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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

Pain Heartbroken mental pain physical pain

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That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.

— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

Life Pain purpose

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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

Depression broken Life

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'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

Weakness strength Life

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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

depressed humans resilient Depression Being human Flaws

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If you are chronically down, it is a lifelong fight to keep from sinking.

— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

Depression Survival Suffering

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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)

Guilt Self-Loathing Depression

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If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.

— Amit Ray, OM Chanting and Meditation

Anxiety Depression live in the moment

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Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Depression smiling pretending

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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

Depression coping Survival

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Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent.

— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

Mental Illness Depression Pills cures

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I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colors and shades I knew existed.

— Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

World Life Depression

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Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.

— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot: A Novel

Depression Pain Suffering

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I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.

— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl: A Novel

Depression Living Life

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In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving.

— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

Depression Death Living

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I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.

— Stanisław Lem, Solaris

Emptiness Depression Sadness

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The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.

— Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

Depression pregnant Family

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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

Depression self-harm Bravery

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I wanted to tell people, 'My depression is acting up today' as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off.

— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

Depression social life Friendship

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I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out. I don't want it to win.

— Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes

Darkness Depression Suffering

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Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over.

I know how wrong this is.

— David Levithan, Every Day

Mental Illness Depression ocd

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It’s not only about sadness. In truth, sadness really has little to do with it. Depression is pain in its purest form and I would do anything to be able to feel an emotion again. Any emotion at all. Pain hurts, but pain that’s so powerful that you can’t feel anything anymore, that’s when you start to feel like you’re going crazy.

— J.A. Redmerski, The Edge of Never

Sadness Depression Feelings emotions

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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

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Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.

— Miriam Toews, Swing Low: A Life

Depression Questions Life

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No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. I need both. It is an odd thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship called psychotherapy.

— Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Pills Depression therapy

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Once you start down the slippery slope of depression, it's hard to climb off of it. And sometimes you don't want to climb off of it.

— Keary Taylor, What I Didn't Say

Depression Change Survival

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Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.

— Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Grief Depression circumstance

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I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.

— Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres: A Novel

depressed Life careless

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When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

— Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Suffering Pain Life

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I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it.

— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel

Life Depression Acting Living

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Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

— Albert Camus, The Fall

Death skepticism Suffering

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When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.

— Fiona Apple, The Healing Angel Within

Lonely Depression Trust

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The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.

— William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Depression Suicide anguish

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I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.

— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train: A Novel

Control Depression Life

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