Kay Redfield Jamison

People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

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

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“It has been said that grief is a kind of madness. I disagree. There is a sanity to grief, in its just…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“I had tried years earlier to kill myself, and nearly died in the attempt, but did not consider it either a selfish…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“My manias, at least in their early and mild forms, were absolutely intoxicating states that gave rise to great personal pleasure, an…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches' brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes...”

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“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

“It was a tribute to my ability to present an image so at variance with what I felt that few noticed I…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys.”

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“Violence, especially if you are a woman, is not something spoken about with ease.”

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief, and they really need to be treated for…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting

— Kay Redfield Jamison

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

“He was not, it was clear, going to gaze meaningfully into my eyes over long dinners and fine wines, nor discuss literature…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.

— Kay Redfield Jamison

I think one thing is that anybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.

— Kay Redfield Jamison

The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' to the awful, final act of suicide, that those…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

Anybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a…

— Kay Redfield Jamison