Quotes from Joshua Wolf Shenk

Rilke said it again: "Go within, and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth … For the creative artist must be a world of his own and must find everything within himself and in nature, to which he has betrothed himself.

William Styron says his depression was like a storm in his brain, punctuated by a thunder of self-critical, fearful, despairing thoughts—one clap following another in an endless night. Oppressed by these thoughts, people often become hopeless. Hopelessness, in an extreme form, leads people to think that only one thing can break the cycle, and that is suicide.

Did you know that Lincoln liked popcorn, and oysters, and a good strong cup of coffee?

People expected too much, pushed themselves too hard, and therefore brought strains upon their minds that they were constitutionally incapable of withstanding.

sickness of hope deferred

Here, where the lonely hooting owl Sends forth his midnight moans, Fierce wolves shall o'er my carcase growl, Or buzzards pick my bones. No fellow-man shall learn my fate, Or where my ashes lie; Unless by beasts drawn round their bait, Or by the ravens' cry. Yes! I've resolved the deed to do, And this the place to do it: This heart I'll rush a dagger through Though I in hell should rue it! Often

To ease me of this power to think, That through my bosom raves, I'll headlong leap from hell's high brink And wallow in its waves.

Sweet steel! Come forth from out of your sheath, And glist'ning, speak your powers; Rip up the organs of my breath, And draw my blood in showers! I strike! It quivers in that heart Which drives me to this end; I draw and kiss the bloody dart, My last—my only friend!

Her brother-in-law Ninian Edwards said bluntly, "She could make a bishop forget his prayers.

Most suicidal people don't have a sense of what will come next. In particular, writes Edwin Shneidman, "The idea of Hell does not ordinarily enter into suicide . . . The destination (or concern) is not to go anywhere, except away.

In suicide the goal is to achieve a peace of mindlessness.

history is not what happened in the past, but the best story we can tell with the available material

a first severe episode of depression: people who struggle to recover take some pride in their ability to have overcome such a dismal time. If a second severe episode hits, it can be much worse. "Depression is the most difficult when people get better and then get sick again," says the psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi.

because of them, he worked all the harder in his thirties and forties to "make himself," emotionally as well as materially, and go on to do the special work he longed for. Perseverance and forbearance became core aspects of Lincoln's character, and he would one day give the same advice his law partner Stephen Logan gave him, that what matters is whether a person "keeps up his labors and efforts until middle life.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.

He arrived tentatively at his own idea, that melancholy arose from natural, sometimes beneficent forces. Talking about it in plain human terms was his first step toward claiming his own ground as a person who, through no fault of his own, needed help.

After you've found your voice," Collins continued, "you realize there's only one person to imitate and that's yourself … This allows you to be authentic. That's one of the paradoxes of the writing life, that the way to originality is through imitation.

Any system that focuses on order at the exclusion of disorder soon becomes a rigid, homogeneous equilibrium system where no change is likely or even possible.

Lincoln said at the end of the affair that he'd never marry, because "I can never be satisfied with any one who would be block-head enough to have me.