Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Everything previously moving with the grain is now against - you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Moving, Reality, Mind

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2009). “An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness”, p.67, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• ...Time does not heal, It makes a half-stitched scar That can be broken and again you feel Grief as total as in its first hour. -Elizabeth Jennings

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Grief, Broken, Half

  10 Copy quote

• One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Ideas, Bipolar, Awareness

  17 Copy quote

• It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Years, Long, Done

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Emotional, Years, Bipolar

  15 Copy quote

• Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Able, Telephones, Helping

  "No remedy presents itself so soon to my heart as mine own sword" by Kay Redfield Jamison, www.theguardian.com. November 10, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

• Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Finals, Way

  23 Copy quote

• Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Bipolar, Desire, Erode

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

  17 Copy quote

• I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Writing, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

• Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers...Restlessness and discontent are vital things... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Teacher, Passion, Curiosity

  7 Copy quote

• It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one knows all, or perhaps even most, of the motivations behind the killing of the self. But psychopathology is almost always there, and its deadliness is fierce. Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Pain, Motivation

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Feb 18, 2013

  20 Copy quote

• Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives of those who are in such despair as to want to end them. It is a societal illusion that suicide is rare. It is not.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, America, Bipolar

  11 Copy quote

• The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Play, Roles

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2011). “Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide”, p.84, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Wall, Sadness

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Dec 20, 2010

  18 Copy quote

• You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Understanding, Illness, Understanding Yourself

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

  16 Copy quote

• No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. I need both. It is an odd thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship called psychotherapy

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Unique, Profound, Pills

  Frederick K. Goodwin, Kay Redfield Jamison (2007). “Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression”, p.869, Oxford University Press

  10 Copy quote

• I think people don't understand how intimately tied suicide is to mental illness, particularly to depressive illness and bipolar illness.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Thinking, People

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

  14 Copy quote

• I think that when you're depressed, you can't concentrate long enough and well enough to read for the most part; some people can, but by and large people - that's one of the first things that goes, is the capacity to read meaningful literature. With grief, that's not true. For a while you can't read, but then you really are amenable to solace.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Meaningful, Grief, Thinking

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• Mood disorders are terribly painful illnesses, and they are isolating illnesses. And they make people feel terrible about themselves when, in fact, they can be treated.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  People, Facts, Painful

  7 Copy quote

• The quickness and flexibility of a well mind, a belief or hope that things will eventually sort themselves out-these are the resources lost to a person when the brain is ill.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicidal, Brain, Mind

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2011). “Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide”, p.92, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• In depression, your capacity to feel just flattens and disappears and what you feel is pain and a kind of pain that you can't describe to anybody. So it's an isolating pain, a completely isolating pain.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Pain, Feels Just, Kind

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. September 30, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Given, Complexity, Comprehension

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.75, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Pain, Loneliness, Reality

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.45, Pan Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

• Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-"sharpened and unusually creative thinking" and "increased productivity"?

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Self Esteem, Sleep, Thinking

  Kay Redfield Jamison (1996). “Touched With Fire”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• It is true that I had wanted to die , but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. Overwhelmingly, I was enormously glad to have been born, grateful for life, and I couldn’t imagine not wanting to pass on life to someone else.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Regret, Grateful, Different

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 5

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin