Prozac Nation Quotes

• I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Feelings, Prozac

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

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• 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

  Philosophical, Book, Hair

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

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Matter, Doe, Plastic

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

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• 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

  Two, Jason, Months

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• I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Love, Heart, Brain

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

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

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Depression, Literature, Way

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

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• 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

  Mind, Sun, Classic

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

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• 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

  Heart, Brain, Needs

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

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• 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

  Depression, Gay, Rights

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Depression, Keys, Sight

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

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

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Depression, United States, Sometimes

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

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• A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight!

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Depression, Sight, Fog

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

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

  Dirk Benedict

  Land, America, Faces

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

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Love, Depression, Knowing

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

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• 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

  Girl, Space, Forever

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

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• 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

  Heart, Brain, Needs

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

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• 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

  Depression, Character, Offering

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

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• 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

  Morning, Heart, Thinking

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• 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

  Past, Vivid Memories, Attics

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

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

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Depression, Pain, Being Sad

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

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• 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

  Happiness, Depression, Fighting

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

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• 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

  Fake People, Hypocrisy, Sorrow

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

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• 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

  Death, Stars, Pain

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Pain, Sadness, Space

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

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• 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

  Missing Someone, Always Trying, Long

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

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