Quotes from Steve Lopez

Love is mental illness going in and mental illness coming out. In between, you do a lot of laundry.

Without a mission and a sense of whom you write for, you aren't worth reading.

The baseline," Father Boyle says, "is to go where life is, and as long as this gives you meaning, why would you stop?

It is possible to cause seemingly biochemical changes through human emotional involvement. You literally have changed his chemistry by being his friend.

Mental illness doesn't choose the most talented or the smartest or the richest or the poorest. It shows no mercy and often arrives like an unexpected storm, dropping an endless downpour on young dreams.

Negativity is never an option

Love is mental illness going in and mental illness coming out. In between, you do a lot of laundry.

It's more interesting to be out in the world. than to see it reflected in the mirror.

Without a mission and a sense of whom you write for, you aren't worth reading.

I feel jerked around. I feel sympathetic. I feel abused. It's almost harder to see Nathaniel on the good days than the bad, because you let yourself be deceived into thinking he's going to stay that way...And I can't just walk away. Part of it is the desire to follow through on something that's become more important and meaningful in my life, and to satisfy the human instinct to help someone less fortunate. And maybe there's something more.

You're only as good or bad as your latest attempt to make some connection with the world...

I can't survive,' he once told me of his refusal to come indoors,'if I can't hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it.

I don't want the concert to ever end.

Nathaniel is not a mentally ill musician, as I have been referring to him, but a musician with mental illness. It's a subtle but significant difference, recognizing the person before the illness.

Nathaniel is not a mentally ill musician, as I have been referring to him, but a musician with mental illness. It's a subtle but significant difference, recognizing the person before the condition.

If you put your very existence into it, your sensitivity and humanity, it makes for a sound distinctly yours,

A friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself.