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The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic

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Jonathan Rottenberg

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“So tell me: were you born broken just like me, born hungry? Are we all of us born with some part of us missing? Are we each us born with a hole?....Born with a hole and no earthly way of finding just the exact right plug to fill it, not 'til you've tried 'em from A to Z and back once more: booze, fags, work, candy, men, girls, heroin, methedrine, methadone, God. Tried having a baby. Tried killing yourself. A hundred religions, from Calvin to the Dalai Lama and back again; tried every damn thing you could think of and some you had to stumble over....You stick a plug in your weakness like a finger in the proverbial dike and let pressure build up let it swell and swell 'til there's nothing left but tension, nothing left but what's left over--the absence, not the presence. The wound you shape your soul around.”

Broken People
Book:We Will All Go Down Together
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“This one night we were smoking a joint up on the roof of this apartment over on Santa Monica and Wyatt said, ‘I love you so much and I don’t understand why you don’t love me.’ I said, ‘I love you as much as I’m willing to love anybody.’/ And then he had this chorus about me having a big heart but no love in it. I kept looking at the words, thinking, This isn’t right. He didn’t understand me at all. So I thought about it for a little while and got out a pen and paper. I wrote some things down. When he woke up, I said, ‘Your chorus should be more like Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.”

Unrequited LoveBroken People
Book:Daisy Jones & The Six
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“So tell me: were you born broken just like me, born hungry? Are we all of us born with some part of us missing? Are we each us born with a hole?....Born with a hold and no earthly way of finding just the exact right plug to fill it, not 'til you've tried 'em from A to Z and back once more: booze, fags, work, candy, men, girls, heroin, methedrine, methadone, God. Tried having a baby. Tried killing yourself. A hundred religions, from Calvin to the Dalai Lama and back again; tried every damn thing you could think of and some you had to stumble over....You stick a plug in your weakness like a finger in the proverbial dike and let pressure build up let it swell and swell 'til there's nothing left but tension, nothing left but what's left over--the absence, not the presence. The wound you shape your soul around.”

Broken People
Book:We Will All Go Down Together
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“In stories, a person can be terrible just because, but in real life, I don't think that is true. In real life, people are terrible because they are broken, or people are terrible because they are lonely, or people are terrible because they want or need something they can't have and they justify all sorts of crimes in order to get it. And sometimes, people are terrible because they are afraid.”

Broken People
Author:Kelly Barnhill, winner of the Newbery Award for The Girl Who Drank the Moon
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