Terri Cheney: Quotes from Manic

But when you're heading up toward mania, the slightest sensation hotwires your nerves. Sound is noise, sunshine is glare, and it takes all of your self-control not to just slice that mosquito bite clean off your ankle.

That morning the prick of the hairbrush against my scalp had been so excruciating I'd thrown the brush in the toilet. I've thrown a lot of things in the toilet on my way up to mania - not all of them visible, or easily replaced.

One minute I was contemplating soundproofing the windows with Scotch tape, the next I was pawing through my closet, looking for the sexiest confront-your-neighbor outfit I could find.

You get beautifully and painfully thin on the road up to mania. Eating simply doesn't occur to you because there are too many other thoughts occupying your mind, important thoughts, thoughts that could change the world if only you could stop long enough to jot them down.

Tight jeans, visible nipples, and sensible flats: an odd assemblage of personalities, but it wasn't what I was really wearing when I marched up the street to my neighbor's gate. In my mind's eye, I was dressed for battle, in the cruel gray suit that I wore only to federal court, and then only for do-or-die cases; and the black patent leather pumps that I purposefully bought a size too small, just to keep me mean.

- Terri Cheney, Manic (pg 60-61)