Susan Sontag

I believe we have to nip Ebola in the bud before it spreads through Africa and to other countries.

I use the world as my therapy – as my therapist.

My advice would be to talk to people about [your anxiety]. Don’t feel alone in it. Treat your body as if you are another person that you need to take care of and heal.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

You have good days and bad days, and depression’s something that, y’know, is always with you.

I got the mumps. They threw me in a crib so I wouldn’t roll out onto the floor. And there’s a big bay window in my house, and that window stayed perfectly still until that train started to chug. At a certain speed, I could reach up and feel the pane, and that glass pane would vibrate. I said, Doggone, there’s got to be a reason for this. So I go to the kindergarten teacher, and she takes me to the science teacher, and the science teacher takes me to the library and reads it off to me — “This is called resonance.” That was the beginning.

I want to change the stigma of crazy, of mental health – period.

The worst drugs are as bad as anybody’s told you. It’s just a dumb trip, which I can’t condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one’s own personal, social, emotional reasons. It’s something to be avoided if one can help it.

It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn’t even think. That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.

[on depression] This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am on of them. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

Need a whole new syntax for fatigue on days like this.

You don’t see the mental illness: It’s not a mass; it’s not a cyst. But it’s there. Why do you need to prove it?

I think it’s important for us to have open conversations about mental health, especially with me being black, because we’ve never had therapists in the black community, we’ve never taken medication. I think it was good that when I had my first complete blackout at age 5, my mom didn’t fully medicate me, because I might not have fully been Ye.

A lot of people undermine their own anxiety because they’re like…nothing’s necessarily going wrong. It just happens and it’s just inside of you and that’s not something you should be ashamed of. It’s justified because it’s happening.