The so-called "depressed" person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of "hopelessness" or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square, and surely not because death seems suddenly appealing.

The person who is invisible, agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing at the same window just checking out the view.

The fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of the two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's the terror of the flames, and yet, nobody down on the sidewalk looking up and yelling "Don't!" and "Hang on!", can understand the jump. Not really.

You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

That's what people do. Kill the things they're afraid of.

I'm kind of a mess, but I think we all are. No one is all together. I don't think you ever get it together.

If you did, you'd probably manage to spontaneously combust.

If you ever manage to be perfect, I think you'd have to die before you ruin things for everyone else.

I've been about that. Am I lucky? Lucky that I'm not perfect, that I haven't died? Am I lucky that compared to other kids around here, my life doesn't seem so bad?

Maybe I am, but I have to say, I don't feel lucky.

For one thing, I'm stuck in this pit, and just because your life isn't as awful as someone else's, that doesn't mean it doesn't suck.

You can't compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It doesn't work.

What might look perfect, or even look OK, to you, might be living hell for the person living in it.

How come someone always saves the people who try to kill themselves, and then makes them tell everyone how sorry they are for ruining their evening?

I keep feeling like everyone wants me to apologize for something, but I'm not going to. I don't have anything to apologize for.

Anyone can be crazy, that usually just because there's something screwed up in your wiring, you know?

I know people are talking, but I'm not listening anymore.

It takes a strong person to turn their backs on the talk of the weak, and I'm finally a strong person.

There's no time for childish talk anymore.