The Pursuit Of Knowledge Is An Intoxicant,

As Best I Could Make Out, Having Never Heard The Term Until I Arrived In California, Being A Wasp Meant Being Mossbacked, Lockjawed, Rigid, Humorless, Cold, Charmless, Insipid, Less Than Penetratingly Bright, But Otherwise---and Inexplicably---to Be Envied.

People Are More Impulsive And They Get Slightly Less Impulsive As They Get Older And The Impulsiveness Interacting With The Depression Is Particularly Devastating And Lethal, Potentially Lethal.

There Is A Particular Kind Of Pain, Elation, Loneliness, And Terror Involved In This Kind Of Madness. When You're High It's Tremendous. The Ideas And Feelings Are Fast And Frequent Like Shooting Stars....but, Somewhere, This Changes. The Fast Ideas Are Far Too Fast, And There Are Far Too Many; Overwhelming Confusion Replaces Clarity. Everything Previously Moving With The Grain Is Now Against-you Are Irritable, Angry, Frightened, Uncontrollable....it Will Never End, For Madness Carves Its Own Reality.

I Remember Sitting In His Office A Hundred Times During Those Grim Months And Each Time Thinking, What On Earth Can He Say That Will Make Me Feel Better Or Keep Me Alive? Well, There Never Was Anything He Could Say, That's The Funny Thing. It Was All The Stupid, Desperately Optimistic, Condescending Things He Didn't Say That Kept Me Alive; All The Compassion And Wamrth I Felt From Him That Could Not Have Been Said; All The Intelligence, Competence, And Time He Put Into It; And His Granite Belief That Mine Was A Life Worth Living.

Mania Can Be As Terrifying As It Gets. It Is Certainly As Insane As One Gets And So It's Frightening When It Gets Out Of Control, But There Are Periods Of Mania When It Can Be Extremely Attractive.