251 Quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

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.

Feeling normal for any extended period of time raises hopes that turn out, almost invariably, to be writ on water.

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.

Now I had no choice but to live in the broken world that my mind had forced upon me.

Then, suddenly, I was unpredictably and uncontrollably irrational and destructive. This was not something that could be overcome by protocol or etiquette. God, conspicuously, was nowhere to be found.

Given that, it turned out to be unnervingly easy to keep my friends and family at psychological bay: “To be sure,” wrote Hugo Wolf, “I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful.

Prolonged cocaine use, which diminishes dopamine functioning, gives support to the general rule that external sources of exuberance are ultimately overruled by the brain’s inclination to seek out equilibrium.

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