Observed in the waiting room of the School of Osteopathic Medicine:
1) Man in vomit-splashed pajama top, repeatedly asserting that he is both a lawyer and a doctor
2)

She said, normally people at this level of depression are dead by your age.

I can’t imagine feeling any sadder, or any more grateful. Or scared.

The structure of the language reveals what it has attempted to conceal.

The two primary obstacles to improvement were (1) starting, and (2) continuing.

The parallel life his father had always sensed, shimmering just out of reach, riding a limitless cusp of possibility that never materialized.

never not trying too hard

For years I proceeded as if my activity had significance—a toddler solemnly pretend-working with blocks.

This is the only place on earth where I have final say.

The self-consciously Dad things you attempted to pass on to your family—arbitrary techniques, fetishistic naming of parts and categories, unexamined dictums—mattered less than the unacknowledged resentment, grievance, and rage.

symptom: fatigue
diagnosis: fatigue

Messages on walls or mirrors, invariably perceived as more urgent than those typed on a computer.

First law of thermodynamics: any time a medication falls to the floor, it ends up in the most inaccessible space possible.

The truth, by the time it reaches your lips, is no longer true.

The notes and sketches were without exception more interesting than the final product.

We had no money then, and what little we had we spent on drugs. Back when we were still friends. Before I annoyed you, and my hair looked like shit.