Recovery [from schizophrenia], almost never complete, runs the gamut from a level tolerable to society to one that may not require permanent hospitalization but in fact does not allow even the semblance of normal life. More than any symptom, the defining characteristic of the illness is the profound feeling of incomprehensibility and inaccessibility that sufferers provoke in other people.

—Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind

How can I go on this way?

And how can I not?

—Susan Sontag