John Green about his character Alaska Young (Looking for Alask

“But the weird thing about depression is that it tends to further isolate you from people, thereby making it ever-harder for anyone to bridge the gap and really hear you in the way you need to be heard. So it becomes progressively more difficult to feel that you aren’t alone with your pain, which can make the despair feel permanent and unsolvable.
This is the most insidious thing about depression, I think: It makes itself more powerful by dragging you away from the world outside of yourself.”