Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel is an American writer and journalist, known for publishing her best-selling memoir Prozac Nation, at the age of 26. She holds a BA in comparative literature from Harvard College and a JD from Yale Law School...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 July 1967
CountryUnited States of America
past going-away scar
I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.
past vivid-memories prozac-nation
I wasn't just the madwoman in the attic--I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.
memories grandmother past
Nothing in my life ever seemed to fade away or take its rightful place among the pantheon of experiences that constituted my eighteen years. It was all still with me, the storage space in my brain crammed with vivid memories, packed and piled like photographs and old dresses in my grandmother’s bureau. I wasn’t just the madwoman in the attic — I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.
memories crazy past
It doesn’t matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now.
twenty
I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I've had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.
emergency fund future planned savings women
Women who have it all should try having nothing: I have no husband, no children, no real estate, no stocks, no bonds, no investments, no 401(k), no CDs, no IRAs, no emergency fund - I don't even have a savings account. It's not that I have not planned for the future; I have not planned for the present.
knew positive
I always knew I was a writer. And I always thought to myself, 'Well, why not me?' Someone has to be on the best-seller list, 'Why not me?' Someone has to write for the 'New Yorker,' 'Why not me?' And I didn't really get much positive reinforcement as a kid, so I thought, 'Well let me show you what I can do.'
men
I am baffled by men. When they want me, I don't want them; when I want them, they don't want me.
jobs responsibility simple
The measure of mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job.
suicide self-harm broken
...occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.
heart brain needs
It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
too-late late
Very early in my life it was already too late.
girl sick alarms
I am sick of the girl who cries 'wolf' all the time. Even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm
art jesus pain
Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I’m feeling now. Its so bad, its useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.