Sarah Steele Quotes

I think the value in books like mine, and a great number by other talented writers, is in the ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark, where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike.

I talk to teens everyday about topics that are often extraordinarily uncomfortable.

I want to talk about the things that people don't think you're allowed to talk about.

We can't treat issues as taboo because we find them unpleasant.

In India, there is a huge stigma attached to one having a mental illness; this not only makes it worse for the sufferer but also for their caregivers.

Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

Going to regular public high school and working and auditioning was really, really tough. I never really fit in and hit the stride that all the other kids were on. Instead of going out and hanging out with my friends at that age, I remember being in my bedroom and putting on like a Christina Aguilera tape and just like belting. And seeing if I could hit every single note just like her.

It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness.

Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn’t that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.

If you passed me walking home from school, you probably wouldn't even notice me. That's because I'm just a kid like you. I go to school like you. I get bullied like you. Unlike you, I live in Idaho. Don't ask me what state Idaho is in––news flash––Idaho IS a state. ~Michael Vey

They're caught where there's no way out or where you can't see out. What are you going to do about it? I don't have the answer. If I did there would be no insane asylums. But I see a lot of people, a lot of my friends in the same predicament. Many times in my life, I was there myself.

I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and the end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And then I wake up, and I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible.

It seems that one moment I was this little kid only caring about animals and flowers and stuff, and then the next minute I was this raging stew of hormones. I don't know if you've ever been a raging stew of anything, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

You don't believe it because you don't understand," he said hoarsely. "Prosper was different. He wasn't like other people. He might have hated me, but he loved me too. In his own way. He couldn't help it; not after raising me for all those years." When no one responded – when he saw nothing but expressions of disbelief on the faces around him – Cadel wailed, "He did! He did! I know he did! He only wanted to wreck my life because he wasn't a part of it!" And as sympathetic hands reached out towards him from every corner of the car, Cadel began to cry like someone whose heart was breaking.

The moment you have kids, you are prey to judgment, but you also become a judge. You find yourself going, "Can you believe what she did with such-and-such?" at school.

I went to school for one year. It was the best experience but the worst experience. The best experience because I was, like, 'Oh, now I know why kids are so depressed.' But it was the worst experience because I was depressed.

I believe in such a thing called mental illness that leads to some evil.

It reminded me of a meat grinder. From when I was a kid. Going to school it felt like you were in a meat grinder. It chews you up and pours out this mess that can't function

Everyone can relate to depression. It touches so many. Suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers. Statistics show that women suffer from depression more than men, but that is probably because men don't report it as much.

The man whom society will not forgive nor restore is driven into recklessness.

I believe that in the future meditation could be as commonplace in schools and society as eco-awareness is now. It interests me that an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem.

I really think suicide has a branding problem because it has a tagline. It has a catch phrase, and I bet a lot of us know it. It sucks. It's really condescending. I bet we've heard it. Suicide - the coward's way out.

MID-TWENTIES BREAKDOWN: A period of mental collapse occurring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one's essential aloneness in the world. Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.

And that really captures the difference for the bullied straight kid versus the bullied gay kid, is that the bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. [...] And I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.

Bridget who is crazy said that sometimes she thought about suicide when commercials come on during TV. She was sincere and this puzzled the guidance counselors.