I certainly don't have all the answers, but I know this to be true: we have a great degree of control over what happens to us in the last third of our lives.

At 65, most of us still have a lot to give and a lot to contribute.

I was a quicksilver girl who saw every leaf on every tree. For me, there was no middle ground between sinking and flying, and once I was into my early adult years, my roller coaster got wilder and faster: I seemed to rise and fall with the same reckless velocity.

The main thing that triggered my depression was my isolation that was imposed on me by becoming the wife of the prime minister, and leaving my home, my family. I was young, very young, and very naive and very hopeful and enthusiastic about my wonderful new life, but it was the loneliness and the lack of being able to properly relate to people.

Canadians know me so well - I am part of Canada's collective memory - and my fame would get people through the door who would not otherwise be interesting in talking about mental health.

I know it will blow minds, but I plan on finding an apartment in New York. I'll commute to Ottawa, so I can still be Pierre Trudeau's wife and the mother of our three children - but I also want to be a working photographer.

I had no idea there was such a thin line between sanity and insanity. I got pushed right to the edge by tragedy in my life, and I couldn't stand up; I couldn't recover.

I live with being bipolar, but it doesn't define me anymore.

A truly empowered woman turns her values into verbs. She understands what she values most, and she takes steps to bring that value to life.

Mania is the most destructive of the forces. Everybody around you will tell you you're in trouble, and you can't hear what they are saying.

I am a free spirit that must survive in a free world.

I've never been one to celebrate anniversaries.

I try to build up people, not break them down, and in politics, it seems now the game is breaking down your opponents.

I was a bit of a mother hen at Studio 54.

The best luxury in the world isn't a diamond ring or a nice house - well, it could be - but it's privacy.

The first thing that happens to someone with a mental illness, in the throes of it, is that they lose all their self-esteem. They don't think they fit in.

The label 'wife of the prime minister' is like a giant signboard pointing at my head from a Monty Python sketch. But I am not Mrs. Prime Minister. I'm a human being.

I shouldn't say it, but I found that the French can be the most arrogant people in the world if they want to be.

I can't be a rose in any man's lapel.

I'm no political pundit.

I'm pretty much an out-front, straightforward chick, and I get a bit confused by expectations.

Everyone wants a loving, equal relationship.

I don't care about the respect of the press or the public or anybody. Whose respect every day I'm trying to garner is the respect of my children and my grandchildren and my friends, the people I work with.

I wince at some of the things I did as the young wife of Canada's fifteenth prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.