Kay Redfield Jamison quotes

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)
Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
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. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Look to the living, love them, and hold on. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Suicide is not a blot on anyone's name; it is a tragedy. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
We all move uneasily within our restraints. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. (Kay Redfield Jamison)
Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were. View quote
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. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. View quote
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 anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
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? View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
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)
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. View quote
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. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison
I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. View quote
Kay Redfield Jamison