Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.

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 who 'fail' at killing themselves not only are weak, but incompetent, incapable even of getting their dying quite right.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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
The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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
Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths

Kay Redfield Jamison
I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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
Nature is the first tutor. No one remains untouched or unschooled by the earth, seasons, and heavens.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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
I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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
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
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
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
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
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
Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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
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
The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.

Kay Redfield Jamison
Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it.

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
One of the advantages of science is that one's work, ultimately, is either replicated or it is not.

Kay Redfield Jamison
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