Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel (July 31, 1967 – January 7, 2020) was an American writer, journalist, and lawyer known for the confessional memoir Prozac Nation, which she published at the age of 27. Her work often focused on chronicling her personal struggles with depression, addiction, career, and relationships. Wurtzel’s work drove a boom in confessional writing and the personal memoir genre during the 1990s, and she was viewed as a voice of Generation X. In her later life, Wurtzel worked briefly as an attorney before her death from breast cancer.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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All I do is go to the movies.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Am I worried people will say I’m repeating myself? Sure. One thought I had was to publish it as a novel but eventually I just decided to do what I wanted to do.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Everything’s plastic, we’re all gonna die.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Feminism is a good venue for getting yourself across as much as for getting your point across.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I admire Bruce Springsteen because he’s a heroic person who has lots of integrity and has this incredible body of work that is so vital.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don’t know, read something or write my masterpiece.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I start to feel like I can’t maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn’t one I’ll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it’s worth it.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I’d really like to write a book about Timothy McVeigh, but it would only work if he cooperated.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
I’ll see Naomi Wolf on television periodically, I have nothing against her and what she says, but I’ll feel that she’s a politician, like she’s got an agenda to get across and that she doesn’t always say what’s really true or exactly what she feels.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
In life, single women are the most vulnerable adults. In movies, they are given imaginary power.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Insanity is knowing that what you’re doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can’t stop it.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
It was just very interesting to me that certain types of women inspire people’s imagination, and all of them were very difficult women.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
It’s like Samson and Delilah: watch your back, because trouble could be the person you’re sleeping with.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Like, in high school, I was a good student and got straight As. It was very strict and you couldn’t do well there unless you studied very hard, but every time there was any trouble, I was the first person they would be talking to.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
My life’s actually been quite dull; it’s not all that glamorous.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Ritalin abuse is a big issue in the US.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Sometimes I wish that there were a way to let people know that just because I live in a world without rules, and in a life that is lawless, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt so bad the morning after.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?… I don’t know the answer, I know only that I can’t.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
You don’t even have to hate to have a perfectly miserable time.
Elizabeth Wurtzel