Prozac Nation

Prozac Nation Quotes

A young woman struggles with depression during her first year at Harvard. Based on Elizabeth Wurtzel's novel.

Elizabeth: Hemingway has his classic moment in "The Sun Also Rises" when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, "Gradually, then suddenly." That's how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you're gonna live.
Elizabeth: If only my life could be more like the movies. I want an angel to swoop down to me like he does to Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" and talk me out of suicide. I've always waited for that one moment of truth to set me free and change my life forever. but he won't come. it doesn't happen that way.
Ruby: Lizzy, I'm not crying because you're mean. I just can't imagine how incredibly painful it must be to be you.
Elizabeth: Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.
Elizabeth: If only my life could be more like the movies.I want an angel to sweep down to me like it does to Jimmy Stewart in it's a wonderful life and talk me out of suicide,I've always waited for that one moment of truth to set me free and change my life forever,but he wont come,it doesnt happen that way.All the drugs,all the therapy,fights,anger,guilt,rave,suicidal thoughts,all of thta was part of some slow recovery process,the same way i went down i came back up,gradually... and then suddenly.The pills werent the cure at all,God knows,but they gave me breathing space which allowed me to start writing again only this time it was not as if my life deppended on it.
Elizabeth: I want to forget everything that has happened to me before. I want to freeze this moment... forever.
Elizabeth: You know, if you're going to suggest therapy, don't. I'm living proof it doesn't work.
Elizabeth: One night there was something in my pants, like blood. My mom said, oh, hell, your period. This is where all the trouble starts. She was right.
Elizabeth: Boys never used to notice me before. I wasn't even on their list of alternatives.
Dr. Sterling: Have you had any drugs in the last 24 hours?
Elizabeth: No. Well... I guess I snorted some coke and smoked some pot but uh, you know, that was just to make the ecstasy last longer.
Dr. Sterling: Sure you're not forgetting anything?
Elizabeth: Maybe a few beers?
Dr. Sterling: Did you ever think you might have a substance abuse problem?
Elizabeth: The only substance problem I have right now is that I need you to get me some trank so I can come down off this fucking coke.
Dr. Sterling: And then what happens?
Elizabeth: [to Ruby] We'll be like this beautiful literary freaks. Being brilliant, and dark. Sexy.
[both laugh]
Elizabeth: [to herself] Trouble is, I'm deadly serious.
Elizabeth: He told me afterwards in terms of absolute value, sex and drugs were equally meaningless to him. Just two different ways to have fun. Which is all well and good, until a girl tries out the same approach.
Elizabeth: I don't think Rafe realized he'd just been appointed to save my life.
Grandmother: No one acts this way when they are not on drugs...
Elizabeth: [interrupts] I fucking DO!
Elizabeth: Ever since I was a little kid, my mum and I hang out together. I didn't fit in with most kids at schools. They thought I was strange, so they made me feel like a stranger. And my mother took advantage of it from an early age, throwing me into plays, spelling bees, studying, writing, museums, concerts, and even more writing. She convinced me this would lead to the Holy Grail: Harvard. A place where I would finally be surrounded by people I had something in common with.
Elizabeth: [shouting at her mother] I'm not your god-damned monkey!
Mrs. Wurtzel: Why do you do this to me?
Elizabeth: [at the top of her lungs] 'Cause i'm not your goddamned monkey!
[opening narration]
Elizabeth: Back, back, back. How fucking far back do you go? My mom and dad were divorced before I was two, and from that on my father was almost uninvolved in my life, and my mother much too involved. She wanted to make up for all her mistakes through me.
Mrs. Wurtzel: [on the phone] Mom, she looks beautiful.
Elizabeth: Pity, I was aiming for psychotic.
Elizabeth: You don't understand. You don't understand, it was an accident.
Ruby: An accident? You call that a fucking accident?
Elizabeth: It was, uh, it was sort of, you know...
Ruby: Come on, what?
Elizabeth: An accidental blowjob?
Mrs. Wurtzel: Come on, this is the most important day of your life!
Elizabeth: I thought that's when you get married.
Mrs. Wurtzel: Huh, no honey, that's the worst day of your life.
Elizabeth: Now mom and dad really had something to fight over: me. Then one day my dad disappeared. No numbers, no letters - just gone. I wrote to seventeen magazine, a long letter about us. They wanted to publish it as an article, but kept asking, your dad going away, does he come back? Does it have a happy ending? In reality it didn't, but I thought, what the hell, I'll give them what they want.
Elizabeth: That article... it was just wish fulfillment. I was writing about how I wanted things to be. And the way people talking about it, the way you talked about it, it made it seem real.
Ruby: Well maybe it can be.
Elizabeth: No, it was just a dream I held onto for way too long.

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