"Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it." -- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel (born 31 July 1967) is an American writer and journalist, known for her work in the confessional memoir genre. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.
"All I do is go to the movies.""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.""Everything's plastic, we're all gonna die.""Feminism is a good venue for getting yourself across as much as for getting your point across.""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.""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.""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.""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.""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.""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.""I'd really like to write a book about Timothy McVeigh, but it would only work if he cooperated.""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.""In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.""In life, single women are the most vulnerable adults. In movies, they are given imaginary power.""It was just very interesting to me that certain types of women inspire people's imagination, and all of them were very difficult women.""It's like Samson and Delilah: watch your back, because trouble could be the person you're sleeping with.""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.""My life's actually been quite dull; it's not all that glamorous.""Ritalin abuse is a big issue in the US.""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.""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.""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.""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.""You don't even have to hate to have a perfectly miserable time."
Wurtzel was brought up in New York City in a Jewish family. Her parents divorced when she was young. As described in her memoir Prozac Nation, Wurtzel's depression began at the ages of 10 to 12. She attended the Ramaz School in the Upper East Side of New York City. While an undergraduate at Harvard College, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson and the Dallas Morning News, from which she was later fired for plagiarism. Wurtzel also received the 1986 Rolling Stone College Journalism Award.
Wurtzel is best known for publishing her memoir, the best-selling Prozac Nation, at the age of 26. The book chronicles her battle with depression while being a college undergraduate and how she was eventually rescued by Prozac after a history of therapy and multiple suicide attempts. The film adaptation of Prozac Nation, starring Christina Ricci, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2001, but never had a U.S. theatrical release. It was telecast on the Starz! network in March 2005 and was released on DVD in the summer of 2005.
Following her graduation from Harvard, Wurtzel moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and found work as pop music critic for The New Yorker and New York Magazine. She graduated from Yale Law School at the end of the 2008 term, but failed the New York bar exam the first time she took it. Wurtzel sparked controversy in the legal community by holding herself out as a lawyer in interviews, even though she was not licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction at the time. However, Wurtzel passed the February 2010 New York State bar exam. She writes on a regular basis for The Wall Street Journal.
On September 21, 2008 after the suicide of David Foster Wallace, Wurtzel wrote an article for New York about time spent with him,.
In January 2009, she authored a highly controversial article at The Guardian, arguing that the vehemence of opposition demonstrated in Europe to Israel's actions in the 2008—2009 Israel—Gaza conflict, when compared to the international reaction to human rights abuses in China, Darfur and Arab countries, suggested an antisemitic undercurrent fueling the outrage. In her words,
