Manic Depressive Quotes

PERIODIC MOOD-CHANGES We have already spoken of the affective concomitants of common migraines - elated and irritable prodromal states, states of dread and depression associated with the main phase of the attack, and states of euphoric rebound. Any or all of these may be abstracted as isolated periodic symptoms of relatively short duration - some hours, or at most two or three days, and as such may present themselves as primary emotional disorders. The most acute of these mood-changes, generally no more than an hour in duration, usually represents concomitants or equivalents of migraine aura. We may confine our attention at this stage to attacks of depression, or truncated manic-depressive cycles, occurring at intervals in patients who have previously suffered from attacks of undoubted (classical, common, abdominal, etc.) migraine. ~ Oliver Sacks

I see you, Yi-yi."
She smiled. Everything she knew about love she'd learned from this pudgy, cranky, manic-depressive, binge-eating beast that had been her companion through hell and back, too many times to count. He alone had protected her, loved her, fought for her, taught her to believe that life was worth living, even if there was no one there to see you living it.
"I see you, too, Shazam. ~ Karen Marie Moning

About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf.

Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this
riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb.

Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incom ~ James Gould Cozzens

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

Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive. ~ Warren Buffett

It's a manic-depressive life. You run in here, you open your incubator, your experiment makes no sense, you think, 'I hate this job.' Then ten minutes later you think, 'Well, now, maybe I'll try this or I'll try that.' You do it because you know there will be an 'a-ha!' day. ~ Bonnie Bassler

Alcohol had a lot to do with it, too, and mental instability. All writers are narcissistic, manic-depressive drug addicts and alcoholics, and I am no exception. ~ T.C. Boyle

When a manic-depressive personality begins to slide deeply into a depressive period, he had written, one symptom he or she may exhibit is acts of self-punishment: slapping, punching, pinching, burning one's self w/ cigarette butts, ~ Stephen King

I think if you're in this business, like any high-stakes business, the highs and lows can make you a manic-depressive person, if you weren't that way to start with. 'Cause it's just so crazy on your psyche. A lot of it has to do with people thinking they're greater than someone else. ~ Joan Cusack

The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness. ~ Tony Hendra

The clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature. Byron had this in an almost textbook manner, showing frequent and pronounced fluctuations in mood, energy, sleep patterns, sexual behavior, alcohol and other drug use, and weight (Byron also exhibited extremes in dieting, obsession with his weight, eccentric eating patterns, and excessive use of epsom salts). Although these changes in mood and behavior were dramatic and disruptive when they occurred, it is important to note that Byron was clinically normal most of the time; this, too, is highly characteristic of manic-depressive illness. An inordinate amount of confusion about whether someone does or does not have manic-depressive illness stems from the popular misconception that irrationality of mood and reason are stable rather than fluctuating features of the disease. Some assume that because an individual such as Byron was sane and in impressive control of his reason most of the time, that he could not have been "mad" or have suffered from a major mental illness. Lucidity and normal functioning are, however, perfectly consistent with-indeed, characteristic of-the phasic nature of manic-depressive illness. This is in contrast to schizophrenia, which is usually a chronic and relatively unrelenting illness characterized by, among other things, an inability to reason clearly. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I spoke so much about being a manic-depressive. I want to bring everyone back to my earliest memories of this companion of mine. Some people call this companion I have an ailment, or worse a terrible nightmare from which some people cannot awaken. I know that I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have nothing that should garner a stigma. ~ Richard Dreyfuss

Nowadays you envy a manic-depressive. Half the time he's happy, the other half he's right. ~ Robert Breault

You're manic-depressive and you're manic-depressive too and you, you're definitely manic-depressive, girl. And you over there in the corner, you're just plain fucking depressive. ~ Colum McCann

We see her go through dangerous mood-swings, but I tried never to come right out and say "Annie was depressed and possibly suicidal that day" or "Annie seemed particularly happy that day."If I have to tell you, I lose. If, on the other hand, I can show you a silent, dirty-haired woman who compulsively gobbles cake and candy, then have you draw the conclusion that Annie is in the depressive part of a manic-depressive cycle, I win. ~ Stephen King

Every now and then I hear voices in my head, but not very clear. I can't understand what they are saying. It's a mental illness. I have been diagnosed as a manic depressive. ~ Brian Wilson

The first person who ever told me that happiness was work was this manic-depressive artist I knew when I was in my 20s. I was like, 'What are you talking about? Happiness just happens. That's even the root of that word. How could it be work?' ~ Ariel Gore

The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I go from being hugely hopeful and entertaining to ... really not. I'm not manic depressive, but I can really go to the darker side. ~ Selma Blair

At the top of the cycle you write policies for everybody, no matter how bad, and at the bottom you cancel everybody, no matter how good. It's a manic-depressive cycle. ~ Robert Hunter

I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe."
"'Know thyself.'"
"We try, sir. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Recent studies have shown that approximately 40% of authors are manic depressive. The rest of us just drink. ~ Melodie Campbell

You said how Michelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist. (...) You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O'Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.

"According to Thomas Mann," Peter said, "'Great artists are great invalids. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

The world is essentially bipolar: driven to extremes but defined by flux. Saints are always just a stumble away from sinners. Nothing is absolute, not even death ~ Terri Cheney

I had a husband who, I'm convinced, was an undiagnosed manic depressive. He didn't treat me as if I had a brain - I was just this beautiful little doll he could show off. ~ Britt Ekland

Work ethic and this determination is all part of escaping the depressive side. Of course I'm manic depressive, maybe not to the degree that Exley was, but I think all writers are. There are highs and lows. Look at David Foster Wallace. ~ T.C. Boyle

I suffer from manic-depressive disorder, and I've chosen not to take medication for it. Because of that, every once in a while I go through manic episodes and really depressed episodes. ~ Scott Weiland

When you read the [Twilight series], it's like saying 'Edward Cullen is so beautiful I creamed myself'. I mean every line is like that. He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do it. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year old virgin, so there's clearly some issues there ~ Robert Pattinson

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 disordered
1. 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

The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness ... . To put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it. ~ Joan Didion

The point about manic depression or bipolar disorder, as it's now more commonly called, is that it's about mood swings. So, you have an elevated mood. When people think of manic depression, they only hear the word depression. They think one's a depressive. The point is, one's a manic-depressive. ~ Stephen Fry

I have one priority in life and it's not making millions as it once was.

I have all the money I could ever want, too much, India claims. I'm business driven but it's my girl who is the most important part of my life.

My whole life.

It's that very reason I'm reluctant to bring any shift in our happy bubble.

We both work hard. We play hard together.

That woman is my equal in every aspect of life.

She thrills me, and intrigues me.

I've loved peeling back India's layers.

She's vulnerable is my mean girl and I love the place we've gotten to where she trusts me with all her sad, unsure moments.

She will grieve for her brother for the rest of her life.

She'll always worry about her mom becoming manic depressive again.

She'll forever be a woman who puts everyone else before her own needs.

But what's different in India's life is she now has me who makes sure she's first. In everything.

It's going to kill me to see the happiness drop from her eyes.

She'll go into fix it mode and when she can't, she'll get angry and stressed. ~ V. Theia

A label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time. "Right," "wrong," "success," "failure," "lucky," "unlucky," may be as limiting a way of seeing things as "diabetic," "epileptic," "manic-depressive," or even "invalid." Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward something that is really new and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expectations and not with life itself. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Serge's attention-deficit disorder was the first of many hyphens. Obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anal-retentive, paranoid-schizophrenic. He was believed to be the only self-inflicted case of shaken-baby syndrome. ~ Tim Dorsey

People who go into the arts are often hurt people. Many are manic-depressive. Some have tried suicide and some have succeeded. It's just part of the game. We are people who are oversensitive. That's why we're in this business, because of our need to communicate. ~ Mandy Patinkin

Pitt the Elder, had been prime minister a generation before (1766-68). He was a manic-depressive, had had a mental breakdown in 1751 while a Cabinet minister (Paymaster General) and had withdrawn from public office for three years. While serving in the highest office, clear signs of mental instability were evident. He spent most of his prime ministership sequestered away in a small room in his house at Hampstead, trying to avoid his ministers and the pressures of governing. During his time, his Chancellor was doing his own thing, unwisely levying the taxes on the North American colonies that would eventually ignite the War of Independence. ~ Phil Mason

My dad is actually a manic depressive, which is very exciting half the time. ~ Marc Maron

In this town you can be a wife-beating, manic-depressive crack-head and everyone opens their arms to you. They say, "Hey, pal, don't worry about it. We'll get you into recovery. It's all part of the journey." But if you become a born-again Christian and love Jesus Christ and want to share that with other people, they say, "You've committed the unpardonable sin. ~ Kirk Cameron

I'm a happy-go-lucky manic-depressive. It does get very deep and dark for me, and it gets scary at times when I feel I can't pull out of it. But I don't consider myself negative-negative. I'm positive-negative. ~ Tim Burton

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance. ~ Igor Stravinsky

I don't know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. ~ Frank Sinatra

Homicide central, East New York, Where the manic-depressive psycho murderers stalk ~ Jeru The Damaja

Worse, Roger erupted into outbursts of uncontrollable rage, without apparent cause. In time I learned that this was one symptom of what therapists formerly described as a manic-depressive personality. Now they call the condition bipolar disorder. Roger sometimes telephoned and began the conversation, "You better listen to me, Dad, or you are one dead man." Then, half an hour later, "Dad, can we go to the Yankee game tonight?" Bipolar disorder is terrifying, perhaps most of all for the person suffering from it. ~ Roger Kahn

Oh! This'll impress you - I'm actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is so proud. Keep in mind though, I'm a PEZ dispenser and I'm in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can't have it all? ~ Carrie Fisher

Moods are by nature compelling, contagious, and profoundly interpersonal, and disorders of mood alter the perceptions and behaviors not only of those who have them but also of those who are related or closely associated. Manic-depressive illness - marked as it is by extraordinary and confusing fluctuations in mood, personality, thinking, and behavior - inevitably has powerful and often painful effects on relationships. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Selling your apartment in New York is like dating a manic-depressive.. you get used to cycles of elation and despondency. Every time someone would come to see the apartment, there was the thrill of the date. You want to be presentable, so you clean the place up, make sure it smells good, put on some mood lighting and mellow music. ~ Anderson Cooper

I taught how to be sociable with ink on paper. I told my students that when they were writing they should be good dates on blind dates, should show strangers good times. Alternatively, they should run really nice whorehouses, come one, come all, although they were in fact working in perfect solitude. I said I expected them to do this with nothing but idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numbers, and maybe eight punctuation marks, because it wasn't anything that hadn't been done before.

In 1996, with movies and TV doing such good jobs of holding the attention of literates and illiterates alike, I have to question the value of my very strange, when you think about it, charm school. There is this: Attempted seductions with nothing but words on paper are so cheap for would-be ink-stained Don Juans or Cleopatras!They don't have to get a bankable actor or actress to commit to the project, and then a bankable director, and so on, and then raise millions and millions of buckareenies from manic-depressive experts on what most people want.
Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer: Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Circadian rhythms are implicated in some of the symptoms of depression, such as early awakening and diurnal variation in mood. The possible importance of the circadian system in its pathogenesis is suggested by the capacity of experimental alterations in the timing of sleep and wakefulness to alter clinical state." Biological rhythms range in frequency from milliseconds to months or years. Most rhythmic disturbances identified in the symptoms of manic-depressive illness occur over the course of a day-that is, they are circadian rhythms-and are most apparent in the daily rest-activity cycle. The episodic recurrences of the illness, on the other hand, are usually infradian, oscillating over periods of months or years. Episodic mania and depression may also reflect disturbances in ultradian rhythms, those that oscillate more than once a day, which are common at the cellular level and in hormone secretion, as well as in such autonomic functions as circulation, blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and in the cycles of sleep. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I am a rapid-cycling manic-depressive, bi-polar one disorder, which means I can have thirty or forty episodes a year, and I used to have thirty to forty episodes a year. ~ Andy Behrman

I'm manic-depressive, technically bi-polar II with many borderline features. ~ Kate Braverman

My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Kirsten, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it's me ... But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol. ~ Christopher Titus

If energy is delight and exuberance is beauty, the manic depressive knows more about life than anyone else. Didn't Freud say happiness was nothing more than the remission of pain? So, the more pain, the intenser the happiness. ~ Saul Bellow

Crutches may be a pain in the (pinched nerve back) ass to use, but damn, they are handy when your dog pushes open the bathroom door while you are contemplating life. They're also handy to turn on lights just out of your reach, and to threat your husband with if he doesn't fetch you a Fresca because you are a poor, pathetic little thing huddled under a Snuggy, unable to walk without bellowing profanities at the top of your lungs, thereby scaring your dogs, the fat squirrel stuffing his face on the deck, and the manic depressive goats that live three houses down. ~ Katie MacAlister

Medical research has revealed that in about one-tenth of the population, the liver processes alcohol differently, releasing a chemical messenger that creates the craving for another drink; once that second drink is taken, the desire is doubled. But the real problem of the alcoholic is actually centered in the mind, because we can't remember why it was such a bad idea to pick up that first drink. Once we start, we can't stop; and when we stop, we can't remember why we shouldn't start again. It is a form of mental illness, like a manic-depressive who, after being stabilized on medication for a while, suddenly decides she is fine and no longer needs her pills. ~ Kaylie Jones

I'm a classic eccentric, living at the extremes of high mania and low mood. There's no middle ground, only madness and sadness. ~ Fennel Hudson

I think you have waves of awareness and one of the things that I found with grief was actually - I was well prepared for it by the cyclicality of my manic depressive illness because I was used to things coming and going and so forth. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Manic depressive people often have incredible energy and a slightly skewed, but nonetheless valid, way of looking at things. ~ Kathryn Lasky

I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else
- Faster, Manic Street Preachers ~ Richey Edwards

In a city once ravaged by storms, where the destitute victimized by ferocious wind and rain and by the collapse of levees - which were inadequately engineered and no warning was given that they might not hold - and where the only crime attributed to those people was that they were too poor to flee and were consequently fired upon and two of them shot dead - not by looters, not by warring gangs, not by manic throngs of frightened or disoriented people like themselves, but by the very men charged to protect them - ~ John Farrow

Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. ~ Anna Quindlen

I turned around and headed back to the stairwell, planning to go downstairs and buy a chocolate bar from the vending machine. Maybe it would fall on me and end my misery. ~ Kenneth Oppel

If you think you can't
Do something,
Think deeper,
Work harder
Change the way
Change a method
And you will realize
What you want ~ Slobodan Boban Manic

You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic. ~ Matt Haig

A period of lewdness and shamelessness exists with the highest type of manic delirium. ~ Aretaeus Of Cappadocia

I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example, when we're backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddy [sic] Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd, which is something I totally admire and envy. ~ Freddie Mercury

Or The Last Exorcism, I researched a lot of real exorcisms. I watched videos of exorcisms, I listened to tapes, and I read actual accounts of priests' logs. I also looked at a lot of the physicality. I would look into fits of hysteria and look at energies of people in manic, hysteric fits. ~ Ashley Bell

I've come to understand that migraine is a part of the personality. I have migraine troughs. These often follow high productivity. I have a hypo-manic phase, then I'll crash. ~ Siri Hustvedt

If you spent a proper amount of time with me, you would probably wonder if I was on drugs - I'm not. I'm just incredibly hyperactive and manic. I can be quiet and serious at the same time. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

I am not manic-just happy. It has been such a long time since I was happy. Please join me on my magic carpet for now. ~ Barbara Field Benziger

Depressive ontology is dangerously seductive because, as the zombie twin of a certain philosophical wisdom, it is half true. As the depressive withdraws from the vacant confections of the lifeworld, he unwittingly finds himself in concordance with the human condition so painstakingly diagrammed by a philosopher like Spinoza: he sees himself as a serial consumer of empty simulations, a junky hooked on every kind of deadening high, a meat puppet of the passions. The depressive cannot even lay claim to the comforts that a paranoiac can enjoy, since he cannot believe that the strings are being pulled by any one. No flow, no connectivity in the depressive's nervous system. ~ Mark Fisher

The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality. ~ Sylvia Plath

Just saying no to drugs is like just saying cheer up to a manic depressant ~ Steven Tyler

Good morning, Mike," I mumbled, making a beeline for the coffeepot.
"Oooooh!" he teased again. "Someone is getting married tonight! Woooooooo…"
"Yep," I said, taking that first glorious sip of java. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"
Mike put his hand over his mouth and snickered. Then he asked, "So…are you guys gonna do some…some kissin'?"
"I certainly hope so," I said. This only served to make Mike laugh harder.
"Ooooooh!" he squealed. "Are you gonna have a baby?"
Oh, Lord.
I took another hit of Gevalia and answered, "Not today." Mike cracked up again. He was clearly on a roll.
"What's so funny this morning, Mike?" I asked.
"Your s-s-s-stomach is gonna get so fat," he answered. Mike was quickly approaching manic stage--the result of a large, busy weekend and his routine being disrupted. Soon the inevitable crash would come. I just hoped I was on the plane to Australia when it happened. It wasn't going to be pretty.
"Oh, whatever, Mike," I answered, feigning indignation. ~ Ree Drummond

Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It's fun and it's frightening as hell. Some patients - bipolar type I - experience both extremes; other - bipolar type II - suffer depression almost exclusively. But the "mixed state," the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression's paranoid self-loathing. ~ David Lovelace

When you're depressed, you know, it's like the world has ended. Even getting out of bed takes the most massive amount of effort. But when you're manic, oh, it's so addicting. You know, I have finished novels in two weeks in manic stages. ~ Sherman Alexie

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really "out there" cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately - imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Something which is against natural laws seems to me rather out of the question because it would be a depressive idea about God. It would make God smaller than he must be assumed. When he stated that these laws hold, then they hold, and he wouldn't make exceptions. This is too human an idea. Humans do such things, but not God. ~ Max Born

Don't put people, or anything else, on pedestals, not even your children. Avoid global labels such as genius or weirdo. Realize those closest get the benefit of the doubt and so do the most beautiful and radiant among us. Know the halo effect causes you to see a nice person as temporarily angry and an angry person as temporarily nice. Know that one good quality, or a memory of several, can keep in your life people who may be doing you more harm than good. Pay attention to the fact that when someone seems nice and upbeat, the words coming out of his or her mouth will change in meaning, and if that same person were depressive, arrogant, or foul in some other way, your perceptions of those same exact words would change along with the person's other features. ~ David McRaney

He smiled without his teeth. Small, shyly. I found myself smiling back. Like an impulse
Then he ruined it by saying…
"You're not like other girls, are you?"
And I activated.
Every single emotion I'd been squashing into my guts exploded like a burst appendix. I jumped off the bed and turned to him with a scowl I was sure he'd need permanent therapy to recover from.
"Are you kidding me Harry?"
"Woah Audrey. Hey, hey, hey. It's a compliment."
I felt like screaming.
"It's NOT a compliment.
I threw my arms up, any motion to get rid of the rage pulsing through me.
It's an insult to every single woman on this PLANET. Don't you DARE try and pull that shit on me.
"What shit?!" Harry was stupid enough to ask. "I was saying something nice…"
I shook my head so hard.
"No, you were saying something clichéd and UNTRUE. I AM like other girls, Harry. Don't misinterpret my hatred of romance as some kooky, laid-back, manic pixie NONSENSE. I am DAMAGED. I am not CUTE. I am emotionally-fucking-traumatised right now, okay? I am screaming on the inside. I am too angry and messed up to contain all the stuff girls spend every day containing. That's why I seem different. That is NOT sexy. ~ Holly Bourne

When you manic you create, when you depressed you edit ~ Leo Kottke

I feel . . . low," I say, looking away. "Like, literally low. Flat. It's not . . . sad, exactly. I mean, sad too, obviously. But that's a different feeling, I guess."

She nods. "There's a reason it's called 'depression' and not 'chronic sadness' or 'manic sorrow.'" She picks up a foam stress ball and squeezes it, leaving imprints of her fingers. "Depressions like these are holes left behind by a physical force. With mental depression, the force can be chemical or situational or both, but it doesn't just make a hole--it presses you into one that feels impossible to escape. ~ Kate Hart

Six men control almost all the media in the United States--book publishing, magazines, television, movie studios, newspapers, and radio. They are not friendly toward feminism, which has almost disappeared from the surface of our society. You will almost never see a feminist column on an op-ed page, a feminist article in a magazine, or newspaper, actual (not satirized) feminist ideas on television or in the movies. Only magazines & radio controlled by feminists--and these are few and not well-funded--offer information on the feminist perspective.

This might be understandable if feminism were a wild-eyed manic philosophy. But it is a belief, a politics, based on one simple fact: women are human beings who matter as much as men. That is all that feminism claims. As human beings, women have the right to control their own bodies, to walk freely in the world, to train their minds and bodies, and to love and hate at will. Only those who wish to continue to coerce women into a servant/slave class for men cannot accept this principle. ~ Marilyn French

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

Lithium regulates the proteins that control the body's inner clock. This clock runs, oddly, on DNA, inside special neurons deep in the brain. Special proteins attach to people's DNA each morning, and after a fixed time they degrade and fall off. Sunlight resets the proteins over and over, so they hold on much longer. In fact, the proteins fall off only after darkness falls - at which point the brain should "notice" the bare DNA and stop producing stimulants. This process goes awry in manic-depressives because the proteins, despite the lack of sunlight, remain bound fast to their DNA. Their brains don't realize they should stop revving. Lithium helps cleave the proteins from DNA so people can wind down. Notice that sunlight still trumps lithium during the day and resets the proteins; it's only when the sunlight goes away at night that lithium helps DNA shake free. Far from being sunshine in a pill, then, lithium acts as "anti-sunlight." Neurologically, it undoes sunlight and thereby compresses the circadian clock back to twenty-four hours - preventing both the mania bubble from forming and the Black Tuesday crash into depression. ~ Sam Kean

Since I am suffering with type 2 bipolar disorder mainly on the depressive side of the bipolar disorder.
I am not afraid nor am I disappointed with it; if this is what God Almighty want me to have; I will make sure that I will make good use of this disorder; and, be the best person that I can be. ~ Temitope Owosela

I'm kind of a manic exerciser. I'll like exercise for a week and be crazy, and then I won't do it for six months. ~ Jane Lynch

I really like when people do 'stream of consciousness' tweeting, or when people's tweets come across as sort of manic and mostly unedited. ~ Mira Gonzalez

I wish I had never got manic depression. When I was in junior high, I didn't know what was the matter with me. It was as if I'd died or something. Now that I go to a clinic and get the right kind of medicine, I am not as depressed as I used to be. ~ Daniel Johnston

Without the Dreamscape, we can't sleep.
My parents remind me all the time about stories their parents told them, of how things were in the Manic Age. The time before our bodies were upgraded to sync with the amazing invention called the Dreamscape. Thirty-eight years ago, people actually had to fall asleep on their own and, sometimes, they would toss and turn for hours. My grandparents said when sleep, in its mercy, did come, it often brought with it horrible images I've heard people used to call nightmares. ~ Shannon Duffy

At any rate, during the few hours when the depressive state itself eased off long enough to permit the luxury of concentration, I had recently filled this vacuum with fairly extensive reading and I had absorbed many fascinating and troubling facts ~ William Styron

Sometimes," says a fellow depressive, "I wish I was in a full body cast, with every bone in my body broken. That's how I feel anyway. Then, maybe, people would stop minimising my illness because they can actually see what's wrong with me. They seem to need physical evidence. ~ Sally Brampton