You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.

Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting

I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.

Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.

One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.

Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.

The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides

Confession is not all about telling your bad deeds to the public, but being proud of the bad things you have done so far.

Egotism: the art of seeing in yourself what others cannot see.

Science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted.

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer.

Defense contractors are able to reap tremendous profits while rarely confronting the risks for which those profits are supposed to be the reward.

Tremble: your whole life is a rehearsal for the moment you are in now.

I promise you, a lot of it is luck. But you make your own luck by working really hard and trying lots and lots of things.

The focus is what is right before you - to give it your best. It sows the seeds of tomorrow.

One of the applications of Big Data is giving people the facts, and getting them to understand that their own decision-making is not perfect. And that in itself causes them to change their behavior

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.