“Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys.” — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
It is an odd thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“Having heard so often, and so believably, John Donne’s bell tolling softly that “Thou must die,” one turns more sharply to life,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds.… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“Reading, which had been at the heart of my intellectual and emotional existence, was suddenly beyond my grasp. I was used to… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Others would say to me, 'It is only temporary, it will pass, you will get over it,' but of course they had… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I, quite literally, woke up from a coma, from having tried to kill myself and it was very clear to me what… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds.… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no subsitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“Grief said C.S. Lewis is like "a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape." This is so. The… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“...even though [my psychiatrist] understood mor than anyone how much I felt I was losing--in energy, vivacity, and originality--by taking medication, he… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadness of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds.… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
It is true that I had wanted to die , but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. Overwhelmingly, I… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds...… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“When I first thought about writing this book, I conceived of it as a book about moods, and an illness of moods,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
St. Andrews provided a gentle forgetfulness over the preceding painful years of my life. It remains a haunting and lovely time to… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“...even though [my psychiatrist] understood mor than anyone how much I felt I was losing--in energy, vivacity, and originality--by taking medication, he never was… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
It's more common than not that bipolar illness will start in the teens. One of the reasons I spend a lot of time on… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I think that for thousands of years people have made the observation that there are certain kinds of extreme depressive states that seem to… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
“I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
When I'm talking about depression, I'm talking about the more severe forms of depression, and I think that conceptualising as a form of grief… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers. — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy,… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior… — Kay Redfield Jamison Copy Share Image
![“...even though [my psychiatrist] understood mor than anyone how much I felt I was losing--in energy, vivacity, and originality--by taking medication, he never was seduced into losing sight of the overall perspective of how costly, damaging, and life threatening my illness was. He was at ease with…” quote by Kay Redfield Jamison](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/57f/kay-redfield-jamison-1826_life_even-though-my-psychiatrist-understood-m_3399.jpg)
