Quotes from Margaret Trudeau

The best luxury in the world isn't a diamond ring or a nice house - well, it could be - but it's privacy.

The secret is to nip any mental disorder in the bud. As soon as you're not feeling yourself, reach out and get some help because you can quickly get better. If you get stuck in it, it's so hard to get out.

My life has been extreme. Most people will not have the experience I've had. But the things that changed me, really changed me, they happen to everyone.

I'm not really part of the Internet world, my age a factor in that and a lack of interest in sharing with so many, so little, so much, so often.

The main thing that triggered my depression was my isolation that was imposed on me by becoming the wife of the prime minister, and leaving my home, my family. I was young, very young, and very naive and very hopeful and enthusiastic about my wonderful new life, but it was the loneliness and the lack of being able to properly relate to people.

I've had enough of being public property.

When we have healthy children, we have a healthy community. They can learn. They can play. They can be part of the future. They can help you all do very well and prosper instead of suffering.

Oh, am I a feminist? I usually say that I was an accidental feminist. Really, I was just being me.

Who am I - Canada's Rodney Dangerfield? I get no respect.

I had to divorce my husband, the prime minister. I found it terribly overwhelming.

Being bipolar is a huge exaggeration of your emotions. You can be pretty high and also terribly low, so I've been through it all.

I was a quicksilver girl who saw every leaf on every tree. For me, there was no middle ground between sinking and flying, and once I was into my early adult years, my roller coaster got wilder and faster: I seemed to rise and fall with the same reckless velocity.

The first thing that happens to someone with a mental illness, in the throes of it, is that they lose all their self-esteem. They don't think they fit in.

The problem with mental illness, as opposed to physical illness, is that it involves wrong thinking or impaired insight. You're not thinking correctly.

I don't think I'm marriage material, to tell you the truth. I'd be a bad choice. But I'd be darling at being a girlfriend.

I tried to be a good wife, but I was lost in my gilded cage.

I can only ask people to be tolerant of the fact that the... pressures of wives of politicians is very, very strong.

I've had so many rich, rich, beautiful things happen to me in my life because I do have energy, and I do reach out, and I stretch my eyes.

I miss being exposed to the leading thinkers of the world.

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I know this to be true: we have a great degree of control over what happens to us in the last third of our lives.

Suddenly I turned 65 and realized, 'Oh my goodness, I'm old.' I think it was when I got into the movie theatres cheaper.

I don't care about the respect of the press or the public or anybody. Whose respect every day I'm trying to garner is the respect of my children and my grandchildren and my friends, the people I work with.

Depression is 80 per cent of my condition, and 10 per cent is mania, and 10 per cent is what we call normal. I say that must be when I am buying groceries. Or vacuuming.

I have a lot of lovely things in my life that I wasn't able to have before I got healed from my imbalanced life.