Grant proved to be Sherman’s savior, believing in Sherman despite the latter’s past mental instability. (“He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk,”

To his wife’s exasperation, he frequently moved from city to city (a very common habit among those who experience mania). He accumulated debt by borrowing large sums of money for his investments, and except for happy events like the birth of his son, he was usually glum.

When not manic or depressed, those with bipolar disorder are normal, just like everyone else, but they retain an awareness that makes their perception just different enough to be unusually creative.

But they don’t fully realize the negative aspects of the disease, which are usually even more pronounced than its benefits: irritability, promiscuous sexuality, and lavish spending.

Mania often occurs without any preceding depression, and in fact more commonly, depression follows mania, suggesting that mania causes depression, rather than the reverse.

The depressed person is mired in the past; the manic person is obsessed with the future. Both destroy the present in the process.

“The illness is a kind of robbery; it robs you of those you love. I don’t want money or power or fame. I just want to keep those I love. And this illness robs them from me. They wake up one day, and I am not the same person, and they say, ‘Who is this?’ And they leave.” The benefits of depression come at a painful, if not deadly, price.

depressive realism hypothesis. This theory argues that depressed people aren’t depressed because they distort reality; they’re depressed because they see reality more clearly than other people do.

Their illness is the susceptibility to mania or depression, not the fact of actually (or always) being manic or depressed.