Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes (31 quotes)

Kay Redfield Jamison: 31 quotes0 likes

Famous Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

“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

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“We all move uneasily within our restraints.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're 'not at all like yourself but you will be soon,' but you know you won't.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“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 in living?”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“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 somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes about life

“Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. … Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated. Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images … So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; … worn death 'as close as dungarees', appreciated it - and life - more; seen the finest and most terrible in people … But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to my illness - the intensity it gives to things”

Kay Redfield Jamison

An Unquiet Mind

“I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

“No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name; it is a tragedy”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

“But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“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

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

“But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

“… 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

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

“One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

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

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

“Look to the living, love them, and hold on.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

“I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: Nothing Was the Same

“Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.”

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

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

Kay Redfield Jamison

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Similar authors

Carl R. Rogers28

American psychologist None

Leon M. Lederman6

American mathematician and physicist None

Douglass C. North18

American Economist None

Elinor Ostrom4

American political economist None

Thomas J. Sargent10

American economist None

Murray Gell-Mann10

American physicist None

Marilyn Monroe149

American actress, model, and singer None

Wassily Leontief10

Russian economist None

Robert Andrews Millikan2

American physicist None

Steven Weinberg46

American theoretical physicist None

Similar authors

Carl R. Rogers28

American psychologist None

Leon M. Lederman6

American mathematician and physicist None

Douglass C. North18

American Economist None

Elinor Ostrom4

American political economist None

Thomas J. Sargent10

American economist None