What's optimism? Said Cacambo. Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant.

The west coast is a mecca for wild hearts, wild minds, wild spirits and I’m a WMD—I’ve got so much energy I’m about to explode.

Call it dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a mixed state: nobody will understand anyway. Mania and depression at once mean the will to die and the motivation to make it happen. This is why mixed states are the most dangerous periods of mood disorders. Tearfulness and racing thoughts happen. So do agitation and guilt, fatigue and morbidity and dread. Walking late at night, trying to get murdered, happens. Trying to explain a bipolar mixed state is like trying to explain the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God: you just have to take it on faith when I tell you that the poles bend, cross, never snapping.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

First the mania for confession,then the mania for clarity,issued from you, dark, hypocriticalsentiment! Let them nowcondemn my every passion, let themdrag me through the mud, call me twisted,foul pervert, dilettante, perjurer;you keep me apart, give me life’s assurance:I burn at the stake, play the card of fireand win: I win this small,vast possession, my infinite,miserable pitywhich makes even righteous anger my friend.And I can do this because I’ve endured you too long!

That’s what mountains do, they taunt you, lure you to the freedom of the wilderness, and it is fucking exhilarating.

The idea to go West just fell into my lap from the sky. Go west, young man. That’s how the best ideas happen. Just out of nowhere. When you’re not even thinking. Like they’ve been created for you and you just have to reach out and grab them before someone else does.

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present 'normal' self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.

When my mind plays tricks on me I can deal. But when my mind plays tricks on my mind I can not tell what's real.