Prozac Nation Quotes:

Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.22, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Matter, Doe, Prozac Nation, Prozac

I wasn't just the madwoman in the attic--I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Past, Vivid Memories, Prozac Nation, Attics, Prozac

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Depression, Might, Prozac Nation

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.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Sleep, Night, Drug, Lithium, Defective

The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Philosophical, Book, Hair, Turtlenecks, Prozac Nation

But I did have two months off between Loser and the start of Prozac Nation. So, it was supposed to be Jason time, right? My time to enjoy myself away from movies.

- Jason Biggs

topic: Two, Jason, Months, Prozac Nation, Prozac

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.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Heart, Brain, Needs, Prozac Nation, Prozac

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.302, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Depression, Literature, Way, Prozac Nation, Prozac

There is a classic moment in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” When someone asks how I lost my mind, that’s all I can say too.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Prozac Nation

It seemed like this was one big Prozac nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Depression, Gay, Rights, Bummed Out, Prozac Nation

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.179, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Depression, Keys, Sight, Insidious, Overcoming Depression

Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: "Prozac Nation". www.imdb.com. June 13, 2003.

topic: Depression, United States, Sometimes, Prozac Nation, Prozac

America is terrified of the passage of time. Prozac Nation. Land of Face Lifts.

- Dirk Benedict

topic: Land, America, Faces, Prozac Nation, Prozac

Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.110, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Love, Depression, Knowing, Idiotic, Prozac Nation

I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Girl, Space, Forever, Fading Away, Prozac Nation

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.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Heart, Brain, Needs, Prozac Nation, Prozac

I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.302, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Depression, Character, Offering, Prozac Nation, Prozac

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.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Morning, Heart, Thinking, Prozac Nation

That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.55, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Depression, Pain, Being Sad, Feeling Depressed, Prozac Nation

I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Happiness, Depression, Fighting, Prozac Nation, Prozac

Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.269, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Fake People, Hypocrisy, Sorrow, Prozac Nation, Prozac

No one who had never been depressed like me could imagine that the pain could get so bad that death became a star to hitch up to, a fantasy of peace someday which seemed better than any life with all this noise in my head.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Stars, Pain, Noise, Imagine That, Prozac Nation

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.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Pain, Sadness, Space, Pain And Sorrow, Clinical Depression

homesickness is just a state of mind for me. i'm always missing someone or someplace or something, i'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. my life has been one long longing.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.82, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Missing Someone, Always Trying, Long, Prozac Nation, Prozac

I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Stupid, Wish, May, Facade, Prozac Nation

You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended to philosophical heights.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Philosophical, Height, Matter, Prozac Nation, Prozac

I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word 'madness' to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. 'Madness' is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Depression, Hate, People, Connotation, Prozac Nation

Nothing in my life ever seemed to fade away or take its rightful place among the pantheon of experiences that constituted my eighteen years. It was all still with me, the storage space in my brain crammed with vivid memories, packed and piled like photographs and old dresses in my grandmother’s bureau. I wasn’t just the madwoman in the attic — I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

source: Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.131, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Memories, Grandmother, Past, Storage Space, Pantheon

Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

topic: Depression, Fun, Lying, Kleenex, People With Depression

Ever since I was a little kid, I was competitive.

- Mariano Rivera

topic: Kids, Littles, Little Kid, Three Stooges, Motocross