c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The fear of the drugs running out is manageable-the fear of time running down isn’t.
— Ann Marlowe
Never has nostalgia held stronger sway
—  never has the belief in the redemptive possibilities of the future seemed so laughable.
The voices in my head that tell the other voices what to do are mean.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries
The fear of the drugs running out is managable-the fear of time running down isn't.
— Ann Marlowe
Psychiatric diagnoses are considered to be technical and bounded; you are either in or out. In contrast, a biblical perspective puts many interpersonal differences on a continuum: people may have more or less of something. This is relevant to sins, spiritual gifts, weaknesses, and character qualities.
— Edward T. Welch
Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.
— Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating
There will always be people afraid of the monsters in the night. They are usually the ones that look for them because they have proven they exist in themselves.
— Shannon L. Alder
Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.
— Bill Clinton
I'm not the kind of person who likes to shout out my personal issues from the rooftops, but with my bipolar becoming public, I hope fellow sufferers will know it's completely controllable. I hope I can help remove any stigma attached to it, and that those who don't have it under control will seek help with all that is available to treat it.
— Catherine Zeta-Jones
The mentally ill frighten and embarrass us. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance. What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation.
— Glenn Close
This disease comes with a package: shame. When any other part of your body gets sick, you get sympathy.
— Ruby Wax
Have you ever suddenly realized it's someone else's mood swing and you're just along for the ride?
— Alex Bosworth, Chip Chip Chaw!
Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32). Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33):- fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore, be kept out of most communities;- authoritarianism: persons with severe mental illness are irresponsible, so life decisions should be made by others;- benevolence: persons with severe mental illness are childlike and need to be cared for.- Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36).
— Matthew W. Corrigan
Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39).Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry. Feb 2002; 1(1): 16–20.PMCID: PMC1489832PATRICK W. CORRIGAN and AMY C. WATSON
— Matthew W. Corrigan
According to Hoge and colleagues (2007), the key to reducing stigma is to present mental health care as a routine aspect of health care, similar to getting a check up or an X-ray. Soldiers need to understand that stress reactions-difficulty sleeping, reliving incidents in your mind, and emotional detachment-are common and expected after combat... The soldier should be told that wherever they go, they should remember that what they're feeling is "normal and it's nothing to be ashamed of.
— Joan Beder, Advances in Social Work Practice with the Military
All this, and much more, she had accepted, for, after all, living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case, mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the in visible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer.
Stigmas speak to the idea of difference and how difference shames us and those we know.
— Michael   Lewis
Pathological dissociation is characterized by profound, functional amnesias and significant alterations in identity; normal dissociation is expressed primarily in the form of intense absorption with internal stimuli (e.g., daydreams) or external stimuli (e.g., a fascinating book or television program).
— Frank W. Putnam
the stigma of severe mental illness leads to prejudice and discrimination. Stigmas are negative and erroneous attitudes about these persons. Unfortunately, stigma's impact on a person's life may be as harmful as the direct effects of the disease.Corrigan, P. W., & Penn, D. L. (1999). Lessons from social psychology on discrediting psychiatric stigma. American Psychologist, 54(9), 765–776.
— Patrick W. Corrigan
The unique stigma of PTSD. The stigma of PTSD remains one of the most formidable barriers to effective care.
— Michael A. Cucciare, Using Technology to Support Evidence-Based Behavioral Health Practices: A Clinician's Guide
People who live with mental illnesses are among the most stigmatized groups in society.Fighting the stigma caused by mental disorders: past perspectives, present activities, and future directions. World Psychiatry. Oct 2008; 7(3): 185–188. PMCID: PMC2559930
— Heather Stuart
Schizophrenia. Always a bitch.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Hitler Burns Detroit
Public stigma	Stereotype	Negative belief about a group (e.g., dangerousness, incompetence, character weakness)Prejudice	Agreement with belief and/or negative emotional reaction (e.g., anger, fear)Discrimination	Behavior response to prejudice (e.g., avoidance, withhold employment and housing opportunities, withhold help)Self-stigma	Stereotype	Negative belief about the self (e.g., character weakness, incompetence)Prejudice	Agreement with belief, negative emotional reaction (e.g., low self-esteem, low self-efficacy)Discrimination	Behavior response to prejudice (e.g., fails to pursue work and housing opportunities)Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry. Feb 2002; 1(1): 16–20.PMCID: PMC1489832
— Matthew W. Corrigan
The authors analyzed 695 news items. The content of 47.9% (n = 333) of the articles was not strictly related to mental illness, but rather clinical or psychiatric terms were used metaphorically, and frequently in a pejorative sense. The remaining 52.1% (n = 362) consisted of news items related specifically to mental illness. Of these, news items linking mental illness to danger were the most common (178 texts, 49.2%), specifically those associating mental illness with violent crime (130 texts, 35.9%) or a danger to others (126 texts, 34.8%). The results confirm the hypothesis that the press treats mental illness in a manner that encourages stigmatization. The authors appeal to the press's responsibility to society and advocate an active role in reducing the stigma towards mental illness.Reinforcing Stigmatization: Coverage of Mental Illness in Spanish Newspapers. Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives. Volume 19, Issue 11, 2014
— Enric Aragonès
But what if you simply don't have a solid self to return to—if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can't conceive of "normal" or "healthy" because pain and loneliness are all you remember?
— Kiera Van Gelder
Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I will probably always feel alone and neglected by others.
— Kiera Van Gelder
In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn't acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process because of three key biological vulnerabilities (1993a): First, we're highly sensitive to emotional stimuli (meaning we experience social dynamics, the environment, and our own inner states with an acuteness similar to having exposed nerve endings). Second, we respond more intensely and much more quickly, than other people. And third, we don't 'come down' from our emotions for a long time. One the nerves have been touched, the sensations keep peaking. Shock waves of emotion that might pass through others in minutes keep cresting in us for hours, sometimes days.
— Kiera Van Gelder
This isn't normal. This isn't how normal people think. Fuck off, world- what the hell is normal anyway?
— Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner
We need this help from the outside because we don't know how to to do this for ourselves. We start with a deep deficit—a chasm really—when it comes to understanding and being tolerant of ourselves, and that's even before we go forth to do battle with the rest of the world. As soon as someone judges, criticizes, dismisses, or ignores, the cycle of pain and reactivity ramps up, compounded by shame, remorse, and rejection. The act of validation, simply saying, 'I can see things from your perspective,' can short-circuit that emotional detour.
— Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating
I need them to be aware and present with me in the midst of the storm, not just tell me what to do.
— Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating
An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation
— Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating
I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out—not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed.
— Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating
For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned—and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear.
— Kiera Van Gelder
My reflection followed me mercilessly in mirrors, car doors, shop windows. I lived in a world of circus mirrors, the grotesque distortion of my body looking back at me everywhere.
— Bethany Pierce, Feeling For Bones
Bipolar is an illness not a hopeless destination it can be maintained with proper medication
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
It's not about blame or wallowing...you are all molded by so much more than a dysfunctional past, and you must ultimately take responsibility for creating the life you want.
— Kimberlee Roth, Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem
All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: 'The lives of suicidal, borderline individuals are unbearable as they currently being lived.
— Kiera Van Gelder
Librarians are trained to be polite, patient, and helpful, no matter who stands across the reference desk.The most important thing is that we look them in the eye and take them seriously. Our work demands that we become dreamers, holding onto hope that our society can be better, that we affirm for our patrons that they are still part of this society, no matter how marginalized they have become. I was raised on the notion that the public library is a civilizing institution. And if our work calms someone's demons or teaches someone else how to treat the mentally ill with respect, then I am proud to be part of the process.
— Robert Dawson, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay
Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It's an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant convert.
— Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating
Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap.
— Carol Lee, To Die For
The thesis that DID is merely a North American phenomenon has been refuted in the past decade by research reports based on standardized assessment from diverse countries, such as from The Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany (Boon & Draijer, 1993; Gast, Rodewald, Nickel, & Emrich, 2001; S ̧ar et al, 1996). Clinicians and researchers should be careful to avoid categorizing a universal human condition as culture-bound.
— Paul F. Dell, Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond
Do you still have any delusions? For instance, does the furniture threaten you like you said the bureau did at home?" "No, not really. That bureau at the end of my bed here got a little threatening the other day, but I got up and smacked it, and told it that it was nothing but a bureau, and it hasn't bothered me since.
— Barbara Field Benziger
If every Genius has a touch of Madness, does every Normal person have a touch of Ignorance ?
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Every one wants to be a Genius. But only the brave choose to go mad to get there...
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a northern fall. And now, the temperature drops well below zero and the deadly cold lake rages below, I feel the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in my heart, spring will come again.But first the winter must be waited out. And that waiting has worth.
— Marya Hornbacher, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power
Life wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Eternal beauty could not exist if it were not for the face of a fatal flaw.
— Allie Burke, Paper Souls
Psychiatrists look for twisted molecules and defective genes as the causes of schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is the name of a disease. If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic “causes” of these “conditions”?
— Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin
For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive.
— Frances Farmer, Will There Really Be a Morning?
...his condition in Roanoke is a strong testament that lassitude, indifference and the peculiarities of his thought were primarily the consequences of his illness and not of the early attempts to treat it. The popular view that anti-psychotics were chemical straight jackets that suppressed clear thinking and voluntary activity seems not to be borne out in Nash's case.If anything, the only periods when he was relatively free of hallucinations, delusions and the erosion of will were the periods following either insulin treatment or the use of anti psychotics. In other words, rather than reducing Nash to a zombie, medication seemed to reduce zombie like behavior.
— Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind
There are such things as delusions, but not every unlikely vision that the mentally ill have is imaginary.
— Shepherd Hoodwin, Journey of Your Soul: A Channel Explores the Michael Teachings
During my sorrowful outburst, my mother had remained entirely impassive. But then why not? Was she not mad? Nay, she was not. She had successfully discarded, as I also wished to do, the arduous yoke of a troublesome existence and had escaped to a tranquil haven somewhere beyond the reach of our world.
— Geoff Cooper, Jack the Ripper
A nightmare has taken hold of my body. Lunacy has dug its way inside my mind.
— Amanda  Steele, The Cliff
When i spend too much time in my head, focused on things in the past or things in the future... when i lose sight of the present, i fold in on myself, mentally, my thoughts become toxic and distorted, my emotions, darken.
— Jaeda DeWalt
And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel. Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her. And a little scared. Well, a lot scared.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife's barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, "It was enough to have been a unicorn." What he meant was that he got to do art. It was magic to him that his hands and mind got to make wonderful things, that he didn't have to be just another goat or horse.
— Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So
His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which moved him to pity, and its own particular movements which he tried hard to follow. He had learned from it how to keep his eyes down on the road, so that he could see no one, and how important it was never to look back - although there were times when memories of an earlier life filled him with grief and he lay face down upon the grass until the sweet rank odour of the earth brought him to his senses. But slowly he forgot where it was he had come from, and what it was he was escaping.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
...I am uncontrollable and dangerous. But of course I do not say this to Jake, mostly because he has never been locked up and doesn't understand what it feels like to lose control, and he only wants to watch the football game now, and none of this means anything to him, because he has never been married and he has never lost someone like Nikki and he is not trying to improve his life at all, because he doesn't ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day--the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and...
— Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook
Plato believed that insanity was essential to our nature and assumed that it held esoteric knowledge about who we are.
— Michael  Greenberg, Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life
The implication that the change in nomenclature from “Multiple Personality Disorder” to “Dissociative Identity Disorder” means the condition has been repudiated and “dropped” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association is false and misleading. Many if not most diagnostic entities have been renamed or have had their names modified as psychiatry changes in its conceptualizations and classifications of mental illnesses. When the DSM decided to go with “Dissociative Identity Disorder” it put “(formerly multiple personality disorder)” right after the new name to signify that it was the same condition. It’s right there on page 526 of DSM-IV-R. There have been four different names for this condition in the DSMs over the course of my career. I was part of the group that developed and wrote successive descriptions and diagnostic criteria for this condition for DSM-III-R, DSM–IV, and DSM-IV-TR.While some patients have been hurt by the impact of material that proves to be inaccurate, there is no evidence that scientifically demonstrates the prevalence of such events. Most material alleged to be false has been disputed by someone, but has not been proven false.Finally, however intriguing the idea of encouraging forgetting troubling material may seem, there is no evidence that it is either effective or safe as a general approach to treatment. There is considerable belief that when such material is put out of mind, it creates symptoms indirectly, from “behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.
— Richard P. Kluft
A child's death isn't always necessary for a mother to grieve.
— Bebe Moore Campbell, 72 Hour Hold
Episodes is about discovery of one's psyche and true personality while being completely absorbed in one's one Mind and thoughts. A story of coping and finding an unsure contentment. Finding the Rational Soul in all of us.
— Rodney Richards, Episodes
I rehearsed Foucault's argument that the presence of madness on our doorstep is good for us, for it reminds us the life we live is only one among several human possibilities.
— Michael  Greenberg, Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life
Bipolar illness, manic depression, manic-depressive illness, manic-depressive psychosis. That’s a nice way of saying you will feel so high that no street drug can compete and you will feel so low that you wish you had been hit by a Mack truck instead.
— Christine F. Anderson, Forever Different: A Memoir of One Woman's Journey Living with Bipolar Disorder
Cause I'd rather stay hereWith all the madmenThan perish with the sadmen roaming freeAnd I'd rather play hereWith all the madmenFor I'm quite content they're all as saneAs me
— David Bowie
While you were busy trying to prove God stands behind you, God was before me lighting the trail, so he could lead us both.
— Shannon L. Alder
A personality disorder is not the foreign presence of demonic possession or a cancerous cluster of cells spreading among the internal organs. It is a pattern of cognition and reaction that impares the capacity to be productive, happy and generally at ease. It is a fractured sense of self giving way to the weight of stressful interpersonal dynamics.
— Merri Lisa Johnson
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, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
The process of reforming the mental health system never includes the complaints that families and caregivers have regarding a need for increased access to resources, treatment, education, and financial support. Reform has continued to ignore the basic needs of families and suffering individuals with severe mental illness and special needs.
— Tamara  Hill, Mental Health In A Failed American System: What Every Parent, Family, & Caregiver Should Know
Intellegence is a disease
— J. Philipse
I want this girl I know i'll never have.But in my mind she'll always be my lady.I fell in love with her instantly after seeing her beautiful face online.I always dreamed and fantasized about her ever since then. She's just breathtaking to me.
— Jared Padalecki
Parents, families, and caregivers are a “minority” group in the mental health system. This population is hungry for knowledge, direction, and peace of mind. The first step toward these things is embracing truth about our “fallen” mental health system
— Tamara  Hill, Mental Health In A Failed American System: What Every Parent, Family, & Caregiver Should Know
Your mother is going to be fine," the nurse says. I breathe more easily but the word settles into my stomach. Fine. Was she fine before?
— Sara Polsky, This is How I Find Her
When I was a little girl everyone made fun of me and calling me awful names.Also saying i'm ugly and now i'm starting to believe it,because I can't seem to find a man that wants me so I go around the internet with a friends spreading false dating rumors on them being with me.
— genevieve cortese
The presuming social view that mental health is not as serious as the media says it is, blocks progress. This too is political.
— Tamara  Hill, Mental Health In A Failed American System: What Every Parent, Family, & Caregiver Should Know
I could think of nothing but the loneliness, of being stuck in that glass room with only OCD for company. OCD, the bully; OCD, the oppressor; OCD, the destroyer of lives; OCD.
— Ben Gander, Ocd & Me
There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of them just to make the music more of a sanctuary.
— Daniel Johns
We have a mental health system that is dominated by political and hidden forces that keep us stagnated and unable to see real, lasting change.
— Tamara  Hill, Mental Health In A Failed American System: What Every Parent, Family, & Caregiver Should Know
PART 2 I felt doomed to death,But in a flash, Before I could reduce my thoughts To an emotion, I felt a mass leave my body:Departing. Then my mind becomes anonymous As is each night. Just unfinished thoughts, and a deep sickness inside,As I was forced to swallow it, Something I've tried to bury deep inside mypsyche to this day. (poem written by alter personality)
— Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
The word is dissociate. There is no 'a' before the 'ss'. People invariably say dis-a-ssociate, which, if you're suffering Disso-ciative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder, can be irritating. People then want to know how many personalities I have and the answer is: I don't know. The first book about Multiple Personality Disorder to make an impact was Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybil, published in 1973, which carries the subtitle: The True and Extraordinary Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities. Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley published the controversial The Three Faces of Eve much earlier in 1957, and Pete Townshend from The Who wrote the song 'Four Faces'. People seem to feel safe with numbers. The truth is more complicated. The kids emerged over time. Billy, the boisterous five-year-old, was at first the most dominant. But he slowly stood aside for JJ, the self-confident ten-year-old who appears when Alice is under stress and handles complicated situations like travelling on the Underground and meeting new people. The first entity to visit was the external voice of the Professor. But he had a choir of accomplices without names. So, how many actual alter personalities are there? I would say more than fifteen and less than thirty, a combination of protectors, persecutors and friends - my own family tree.
— Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Another of the difficulties of having DID is the denial. DID is a disorder of denial. It has to be because if the original person knew about the alters and felt their pain, they would either go crazy and be hospitalized permanently, or would die.
— Eve N. Adams, A Shattered Soul
What will life be like without her? I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears
—  gets tired of all this trouble at home? What if she leaves me too? How heavy is a dresser when you're the only one pushing it against the door? I feel truly on my own.
But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.
— Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life
Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love.
— Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life
I see now the virtue in madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary. I pity the poor shades confined to the Euclidean prison that is sanity
— Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth
Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And so does velocity.In contrast to viscosity's cellular coma, velocity endows every platelet and muscle fiber with a mind of its own, a means of knowing and commenting on its own behavior. There is too much perception, and beyond the plethora of perceptions, a plethora of thoughts about the perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions. Digestion could kill you! What I mean is the unceasing awareness of the processes of digestion could exhaust you to death. And digestion is just an involuntary sideline to thinking, which is where the real trouble begins
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
What's the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I'm not sure if I'm mad or sane. I mean, I hold my life together, I pay my bills, I raise my kids. But the world is so polarized and bizarre now that for some people, none of these these things matter if they're not wearing the right shoes or don't have the right credit score or a fancy family car. Some people think the most important things to worry about are handbags and tan lines. Meanwhile, war and crime and poverty unfold all around us, and we ignore it. In that environment, how can we even begin to talk about sanity and madness?
— A.S. King
Once I had found the courage to tell Rebecca about the children in my head, it wasn't so hard in the coming months to tell Roberta. On the train from Huddersfield one day in May I made a roll call of the usual suspects: Baby Alice; Alice 2, who was two years old and liked to suck sticky lollipops; Billy; Samuel; Shirley; Kato; and the enigmatic Eliza. There was boy I would grow particularly fond of named limbo, who was ten, but like Eliza he was still forming. There were others without names or specific behaviour traits. I didn't want to confuse the issue with this crowd of 'others' and just counted off the major players with their names, ages and personalities, which Roberta scribbled down on a pad. Then she looked slightly embarrassed. 'You know, I've met Billy on a few occasions, and Samuel once too,' she said. 'You're joking.' I felt betrayed. 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'I wanted it to come from you, Alice, when you were ready.' For some reason I pulled up my sleeves and showed he my arms. 'That's Kato,' I said, 'or Shirley.' She looked a bit pale as she studied the scars. I had feeling she didn't know what to say. The problem with counsellors is that they are trained to listen, not to give advice or diagnosis. We sat there with my arms extended over the void between us like evidence in court, then I pushed down my sleeves again. 'I'm so sorry, Alice,' she said finally and I shrugged. 'It's not your fault, is it?' Now she shrugged, and we were quiet once more.
— Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.
— Rachel Reiland, Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there.
— Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life
Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit.but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you.So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable?2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight?3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people?4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to?5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued?6. Do you think about sex a lot?If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.
— Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
We all talk to ourselves. Those we call mad just talk a little louder.
— Marty Rubin
There are sins much more serious than socio-pathologies which really are mental illnesses, whereas self-righteousness is an illness of the soul.
— R. Alan Woods, The Person of The Holy Spirit: To Empower, Equip, and Enable
The neurologist had dismissed her case after a single visit, handing out an easy nostrum by telling her father that if she continued to write poetry, she would be all right.
— Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
I've got to that point in life when there's very few thrills and lots of pills seems we all end up this way. As we wait for our final day. But there's one thing about the pills I take. My manic episodes have taken a break
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Return to Stantasyland
I myself must also say I believe it is true that in the end humanitarianism will triumph
—  only I fear that at the same time the world will be one big hospital and each person will be the other person's humane keeper.
My heart keeps begging me for a reason to keep beating, but I'm running out of lies to tell it
— Stephanie Ware
I can't describe the feeling when I go down – it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn't good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. There's no caramel anymore.
— John Marsden, So Much to Tell You
One of them hasn't got a uniform on or plainclothes either like the rest. He has on the white coat that is my nightmare and my horror. And in the crotch of one arm he is upending two long poles intertwined with canvas.The long-drawn-out death within life. The burial-alive of the mind, covering it over with fresh graveyard earth each time it tries to struggle through to the light. In this kind of death you never finish dying.("New York Blues")
— Cornell Woolrich, Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich
Sharon dropped to her knees and reached her hand over the edge. The gesture was supposed to be a sign of support. But she realized then that it was useless. His insanity was like the stream beneath the ground. It only flowed in one direction, into deeper and deeper darkness. She was going to lose him.
— Christopher Pike, Fall Into Darkness
What sticks with me now is that this man said he needed to get to a hospital. He probably needed to reach his destination more than anyone else on the bus, yet he lacked the capacity to ride without getting kicked off. Maybe he reached the hospital eventually, and maybe he was connected with social workers and housing specialists who will help him transform his life. But I fear he got on another bus, and another bus after that, without going anywhere at all.
— Susan Nielsen
My insides contract- bad. "who are you?" I ask right out loud. And he says what I've been afraid of since I killed Lester's father. Haven't you guessed? I'm you. The real you.
— Bonnie Shimko, You Know What You Have to Do
When my mind plays tricks on me I can deal. But when my mind plays tricks on my mind I can not tell what's real
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Are you crazy? It's a common phrase, I know. But it means something particular to me: the tunnels, the security screens, the plastic forks, the shimmering, ever-shifting borderline that like all boundaries beckons and asks to be crossed. I do not want to cross it again.
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Always remember, if you have been diagnosed with PTSD, it is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is proof of your strength, because you have survived!
— Michelle Templet
After I returned to New Jersey, I thought I was safe, because I did not think Kenny G could leave the bad place, which I realize is silly now - because Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with.
— Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook
You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It’s a distortion of nature, it goes against God’s laws, for in all the world’s woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it’s insane to be different, and that’s why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?” Mari nodded. “People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known.
— Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
My therapist told me that I over-analyze everything. I explained to him that he only thinks this because of his unhappy relationship with his mother.
— Michelle Templet
Toni hears voices," said Trapp. "But who is this Dr. Ellsworth to tell her she's a schizophrenic? Maybe she just perceives better than the rest of us. Maybe the voices she hears are just uncommunicated ideas, floating free.
— Louis Sachar
This was a characteroloical prelude, but it wasn’t chemical or somatic. It was the anatomy of melancholy, not the anatomy of his brain.
— Jeffrey Eugenides
Kate was about to protest when something caused her to look in her mother’s direction. She was standing statue-like in front of the television with that brave, painted-on smile. Then Kate realized what had caught her attention: her mother’s tear-filled eyes were reflecting the on-off motion of the blinkers like a watery mirror. Kate stared transfixed at the flashing points of light that betrayed her mother’s pain. The urge to tell her father how much she wanted him to be proud of her and how much he had hurt her, faded in the dark depths of her mother’s eyes.
— Sabrynne McLain
And Kate thought about a time, long ago, when she had witnessed an ongoing romance between two mental patients. As a teenager watching their unlikely relationship unfold in front of her, she had understood that people did whatever they needed to do to be happy, regardless of their unfortunate circumstances. She supposed her mother’s day care center was born out of the desire to feel needed, while making use of the skills that were practically all she had managed to acquire during decades of battling a debilitating illness.
— Sabrynne McLain
I hadn't thought that as well as the obvious fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you feel inadequate, and a bit useless. That it would be harder to get up in the morning then when you were rudely shocked into consciousness by the alarm. That you might miss the people you worked with, no matter how little you had in common with them. Or even that you might find yourself searching for familiar faces as you walked the high street.
— Jojo Moyes, Me Before You
I am suggesting that we don’t put the “income” cart before the “contentment” horse.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
If you have no job, help is needed.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Our career mantra should be learn, relearn, repeat.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
There remains a natural career progression even though the tougher job climate seeks to delay it.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
What someone may lack in talent can be more than made up for in self-motivation, self-direction, and follow-through.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
You know what? We need a recession in this country, because that would finaly weed out al the subnormal, underdeveloped, stupefied, puerile people in this workforce.
— Jen Lancaster, Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office
Do you want a level of income to fit your lifestyle or a lifestyle to fit your income level?
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
In the name of all that is holy, please consider the wages of a particular profession before you select that degree plan.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
The construct of retirement is dubious at best and a farce at worst. Expectations contrary to this are to be dashed.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Adaptability is the name of the game; if you understand that you must now be adaptable and flexible, you will find a way to succeed in your career. If not, you will succumb to job market pressures.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Labor saving devices have destroyed many jobs but have given rise to many new ones. It simply is up to us if we are going to resist or embrace the future.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Whereas previous generations had to face some unpredictability, current generations are facing unprecedented levels of instability.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
The surest way to ensure career extinction is to resist change and adaptation.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Finding a job that is a good fit is as much about you selecting the right company as it is about them selecting the right candidate.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Everyone is dispensable but some are more dispensable than others.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Can’t we do better with Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software?
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
When presented with an open door in your job, drive a Mack truck through it.
— Miles Anthony Smith, Becoming Generation Flux: Why Traditional Career Planning is Dead: How to be Agile, Adapt to Ambiguity, and Develop Resilience
Do you ever feel that way?""Lonely?"I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it."He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have."Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last."What?""Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
Getting lost is just another way of saying 'going exploring.
— Justina Chen, North of Beautiful
You're reaching outAnd no one hears you cryYou're freaking out again'Cause all your fearsRemind you another dream has come undoneYou feel so small and lost like you're the only oneYou wanna scream 'cause you'reDesperateYou want somebody, just anybodyTo lay their hands on your soul tonightYou want a reason to keep believin'That someday you're gonna see the lightYou're in the darkThere's no one left to callAnd sleep's your only friendWell even sleepCan't hide you from all those tearsAnd all the pain and all the daysYou wasted pushin' them awayIt's your life, it's time you face it 
— David Archuleta
The quiet sense of something lost
— Alfred Tennyson
Most people felt lost after high school. Sometimes I felt like I'd never really been found in the first place.
— Lish McBride, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer
Some things were better lost than found.
— Stephen King, The Dead Zone
She's lost in thought. I'm lost in her.
— Colleen Hoover, Never Never
When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is. Why would you keep looking after you've found it?
— Billy Connolly
Do you have any idea what it feels like to suddenly realize that the reason you’ve have been so lost your whole life is because a piece of you was missing and you never even knew it—only to find that missing piece and know that you can’t have it and so you will never, ever be whole?
— Olivia Fuller, Something Wicked
Sometimes I feel like I don't belong anywhere, & it's gonna take so long for me to get to somewhere, Sometimes I feel so heavy hearted, but I can't explain cuz I'm so guarded. But that's a lonely road to travel, and a heavy load to bear. And it's a long, long way to heaven but I gotta get thereCan you send an angel?Can you send me an angel...to guide me.
— Alicia Keys