Quotessence
Home / Authors / Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel

Elizabeth Wurtzel Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllProzac NationProzacDepressionIfsFeelsPeopleKnowsI CanLiteratureWantElizabeth WurtzelThinkingWayHeartSeemsAddiction Ed ParallelsFeelingsLittlesLoveMind

Famous Elizabeth Wurtzel Quotes

“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.”

KnowsNeedsFeelsHeartI CanHappensTurnsBrainMy FriendsNeed LoveProzacNonverbalProzac Nation
Book:Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America
Create image

“I can see that I imagine all kinds of rejection that never happens. I can see that I beg and plead for love that is freely offered because I somehow believe that if I don't ask for it, everyone will forget about me: I will be a little kid sent off to sleep-away camp whose parents forget to meet her at the bus when she comes back in August. Or else I think people are nice to me only to be nice to me, that they feel sorry for me because I am such a loser- as if anyone could possibly be that generous.”

PeopleIfsThinkingFeelsBelieveKindLittlesI CanHappensKidsAsksParentSleepForgetNiceImagineSorryAll KindsGenerousRejectionLoserBusCampsBeing NiceLittle KidAugustForget About Me
Book:More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction
Create image

“Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep it from happening, but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had.”

KnowsMenFeelsFirstsI CanEndsSometimesMomentsHappensGuyFallJesusChristHoursLossWalksFourHappeningsPicksJesus ChristStandingTwentiesOur RelationshipMournCrossroadsBereft
Author:Elizabeth Wurtzel
Create image

“Depression is a lot like that: slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearale. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getter older, about turning eight or about turning twelve or turning fifteeen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.”

ThinkingFeelsYearsMindHumansHeartLife IsBlackRealizingWhiteExistenceMorningHorrorOne DayNormalComputerProgramWake UpEightAwfulDataTwelveNegativityHeart And MindWorth LivingHuman ExistenceTerrainProzac Nation
Author:Elizabeth Wurtzel
Create image

“Taking a hypersensitive approach to life had come to seem so much more pure and honest then joining the ranks of the numb masses who could let it all slide by. What I stopped realizing was that if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all. Everything registers at the same decibel.”

IfsFeelsSeemsRealizingHonestPureApproachMassSlidesJoiningNumbRegister
Book:Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America
Create image

“I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together – the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night – can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model.”

FeelsFirstsFeelingsTogetherNightSleepDrugModelsCombatDefectiveProzacLithium
Book:Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America
Create image

“You’re going to leave me, aren’t you? … You’ve had enough of me, haven’t you? You’re probably so tired of all this crying and all these moods, and I’ve got to tell you, so am I. So am I. Sometimes it seems like my mind has a mind of its own, like I just get hysterical, like it’s something I can’t control at all. And I don’t know what to do, and I feel so sorry for you because you don’t know what to do either. And I’m sure you’re going to leave me now.”

KnowsFeelsMindI CanSometimesEnoughSeemsHavensCryTiredSorryMoodBroken HeartLeaving MeHad EnoughHysterical
Author:Elizabeth Wurtzel
Create image

“That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal-unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space.”

WantFeelsDifferentFeelingsPainCoursesInterestSpaceClearSadnessSorrowNormalMajorsEmptySeasonsMental HealthResponseAbsenceZoneRight TimeVacuumsEmpty SpaceClinicalsProzacPain And SorrowProzac NationCourse Of LifeClinical Depression
Book:Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America
Create image