Book 1: Prozac Nation Quotes

As I was reading all 311 pages of Prozac Nation, I marked a lot of quotes to use in my paper and this blog. The full list of the quotes is on my Google Docs, but I wanted to post some of them on my blog.

“Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I’m always missing someone or someplace or something, I’m always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing” (Wurtzel 71).


Wurtzel has been depressed for so long that she doesn't know what she wants, what she's looking for, and she can't remember what "normal" is. Her "missing" everything is her trying to fill the depression void with a temporary solution instead of addressing the real problems.


“What I’m thinking is how nice it would be if my problem were drugs, if my problem weren’t my whole damn life and how little relief from it the drugs provide” (Wurtzel 106).

Instead of facing her problems, Wurtzel avoids them with drugs and alcohol; she abuses these substances, but that is just a little problem. While she is under the effect of the drugs and alcohol (she takes everything at once usually) she feels a lot better, but of course, the relief is short-lived.

“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key” (Wurtzel 168).

Wurtzel is feeling trapped in her disease; she can't find a cure, a treatment, a pill that will make her better. There is not exact time to when her depression will be cured; she had been depressed for over 8 years. There is no cure, no guarantee to make her feel any better.

“I tried to remind myself that [he] was not the problem. The problem…was that I was fucked up. [He] was merely a makeshift solution I’d come up with, a pill I took to make the bad feelings go away…Story of my life: I am so self destructive, I turn solutions into problems. Everything I touch, I ruin” (Wurtzel 207).

Instead of providing temporary relief with drugs and alcohol, Wurtzel uses men and relationships to feel less depressed sometimes. The effect isn't permanent for any of them: she sobers up, and she breaks up. Her "solutions" are just makeshift solutions, and she avoids addressing the real problems in her life that are affecting her depression.