A friend called the other day.' How are you?' she said. The sun was shining, the sky a merciless blue. It was only eleven in the morning, but I had been awake since three twenty. I was in bed because, as usual, I could think of nowhere else to go. I said that I was feeling low. Low is the depressive's euphemism for despair. She said: 'How can you be depressed on a day like this?' I wanted to say: 'If I had flu, would you ask me how I could be sick on a day like this?

— Sally Brampton

A part of my depression lies, I think, in my unanswered question: Where is home? I feel a sense, always, of trying to find my way back to a place that doesn't exist.

— Sally Brampton

Bad enough to be ill, but to feel compelled to deny the very thing that, in its worst and most active state, defines you is agony indeed.

— Sally Brampton

Believe nothing. Try everything.

— Sally Brampton

Everyone else has a work party,'Kate said. 'So why shouldn't we? We're working hard at not being mad.

— Sally Brampton

Hope is only the love of life.

— Sally Brampton

I believe, completely, that life is about connection; that nothing else truly matters.

— Sally Brampton

I find it easy to spot a depressive. The illness is scrawled across them like graffiti.

— Sally Brampton

If our minds can hold us back, then they can push us forwards too.

— Sally Brampton

I had carried on when all I wanted was to be dead. I had stayed alive for other people. Furthermore, I never stayed alive for myself. Furthermore, I cannot begin to describe the intensity of that effort.

— Sally Brampton