Openness is the first step toward recovery... addiction remains a secret because of the overwhelming shame associated with it.

Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.

I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it.

How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.

I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.

The hopeful part about that is when you do have that help, you will feel better. It still doesn't make this easy. Nothing makes this easy, but you can make better decisions.

An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.

We deny the severity of our loved one's problem not because we are naive, but because we can't know.

Wherever you be, wherever you may, seek the truth, strive for the beautiful, achieve the good.

How innocent we are of our mistakes and how we responsible we are for them.

Some day each of us will be famous for fifteen minutes.

and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim us which will we claim how will we go on living how will we touch, what will we know what will we say to each other.

I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it's totally wrong.

one pities most those who loved, and still died. Only those who love, dread death.

Each day, be sure to laugh, to think, to cry; that's one heckuva full day.

Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and it's - it's fascinatingly interesting.

Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease

I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

I mean, personally, I would have had no problem surviving. Come on, how hard is it to swim?