Quotes from Elizabeth Wurtzel

Even if I remember the first time perfectly, I don't remember the beginning at all. I mean: the beginning of addiction. It's hard to say when it becomes a problem; it sneaks up on you like a sun shower.

Divorce has taught us how to sleep with friends, sleep with enemies, and then act like it's all perfectly normal in the morning.

I know by now, only too well, that you can never get away from yourself because you never go away.

Time passes slowly, or too fast, or it makes no difference.

Many of the people who consented to talk about their private lives in front of millions of television viewers would say that they were sharing their stories as a way to give comfort [to] fellow sufferers, to raise public awareness, to give a voice to their pain. None of them would ever admit that it was all about ratings and voyeurism and lurid, grotesque curiosity.

And then I think of the Velvet Underground's doleful song Jesus, from their third and least renowned or appreciated album. It is my favorite. Jesus / Help me find my proper place / Help me in my weakness / 'Cause I'm falling out of grace. The only words in the song, repeated repeatedly, composed by Lou Reed, a Jew. You see, in the hour of darkness, it is easier to turn to the Son of God than to God Himself, for some reason. I'm not sure why.

So many more cycles of elation of the first kiss, and devastation when it's over.

Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something. I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing.

A deeply true, wholly aching account of the dangerous way we live now--LOVE JUNKIE is great fun to read, and finally fully redemptive. Rachel Resnick brings a light, delightful touch to a hard subject, and creates a great, relatable, readable memoir.

The words madness allows its users to celebrate the pain of its sufferers, to forget that underneath all the acting out and quests for fabulousness and fine poetry, there is a person in huge amounts of dull, ugly agony.

And I always feel so stupid sitting in therapy talking about my problems because, Jesus Christ, so what? I can't equate the amount of pain and misery and despair I have suffered and endured as a depressive with the events of my life, which just seem so common.

Happiness is a choice, you've got to work towards it

The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death.

where I could make love endless nights through sleepy mornings with my boyfriend, a guy who had grown up in Connecticut and played lacrosse and the guitar and me, and who loved me with naughty desire, respect, and abandon.

You don't need an excuse to be depressed.

What makes you think i'm so rich you can steal my heart and i won't feel a thing?

If you already know what your response will be before you've heard what the other person has said, you are not listening.

And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.

There are all these things my mother is good for that my father isn't, and all these things my father is good for that my mother isn't, and if only they could work out their differences, or keep the dim of discord to a minimum, I could have two whole parents.

Sometimes someone will be standing in front of me, and already I feel him walking away. It's only a matter of time, so what's the point?

At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents...

Just like I didn't dare tell Jack that I was falling in love with him when I was down in Texas, wanting to be a modern woman who's supposed to be able to handle the casual nature of these kinds of relationships. I'm never supposed to say, to Jack or anyone else, what makes you think I'm so rich that you can steal my heart and it won't mean a thing?

if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I lost my mind, that is all I can say too. -Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

I hated him for not being depressed. He seemed a fool-- everyone who didn't feel like me was a fool. I alone knew the truth about life, knew that it was all a miserable downward spiral that you could either admit to or ignore, but sooner or later we were all going to die.