depression « Quotenik

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depression

“I wish one could be sure the suffering had a loving side. The thought to look down some day, and see the crooked steps we came, from a safer place, must be a precious thing…”

Emily Dickinson

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source: May 1862 letter to Louise and Frances Norcross, in Emily Dickinson Letters, Emily Fragos ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 194.

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category: depression, grief, mourning, suffering

medium: Letter

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

Theodore Roethke

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source: “In a Dark Time,” in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1975), 231.

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category: darkness, depression, illumination

medium: Poetry

“Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul.—”

Emily Dickinson

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source: Final Harvest (Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 1964), 124.

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category: depression, narcotic, pain, painkiller

medium: poetry

“You know what a thorough sufferer I can be. I not only hit bottom, I walk for miles and miles on it.”

Saul Bellow

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source: letter to Pascal Covici, dated November 10, 1959, in Saul Bellow: Letters (New York: Viking, 2010), 184.

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category: depression, despair, suffering

medium: letter

notes: Pascal Covici was a book editor and publisher who edited prominent writers, including Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck, and Arthur Miller

“When did the Dark happen?”

Emily Dickinson

more info

source: The Letters of Emily Dickinson vol 2, ed. by Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), 390.

category: dark, depression, melancholy, sadness

medium: letter

notes: letter to Samuel Bowles, about 11 January 1862

“Perhaps it goes without saying that I believe in the geographic cure. Of course you can’t out-travel sadness. You will find it has smuggled itself along in your suitcase. It coats the camera lens, it flavors the local cuisine. In that different sunlight, it stands out, awkward, yours, honking in the brash vowels of your native tongue in otherwise quiet restaurants. You may even feel proud of its stubbornness as it follows you up the bell towers and monuments, as it pants in your ear while you take in the view. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings or on deserted beaches. I take them for walks. Sometimes I get them drunk. Back at home we generally understand each other better.”