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Mental-health Quotes


"The ability to "fantasize" is the ability to survive. It's wonderful to speak about this subject because there have been so many wrong-headed people dealing with it.... The so-called realists are trying to drive us insane, and I refuse to be driven insane.... We survive by fantasizing. Take that away from us and the whole damned human race goes down the drain."



"Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artifact of your mental illness."


"To anyone who is living with uncontrollable worries: Your life isn't as bad as you think it is. It is your frequent negative interpretations of it that are making you feel that way. Try giving your life some positive meanings on a regular basis and see how good your life becomes."


"Anxiety swarms in the heart like worms infect the whole body."


"Anxiety and stress derive from fear and self-doubt."


"Suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary problem." They say, it's not an "answer" in any way. Taking your own life is SE Self Execution, many have said that's a terrible name. I ask should killing yourself sound good?"


"Depression is a reality with everyone. What's important is the ability to move on."


"Taking your own life could become the ultimate failure, because you will be killing and closing the existing door to a chance that might have been waiting to lead you into another path."


"This is a very bad book you're writing, I said to myself behind my leaks. "I know, I said. "You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did, I said. "I know, I said. There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes."


"Many so-called disorders of the mind are simply disorders of thought."


"Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair."


"I am committing suicide by cigarette, I replied. She thought that was reasonably funny. I didn't. I thought it was hideous that I should scorn life that much, sucking away on cancer sticks."


"When people call it that I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state."


"Do you know why you're here? Shall I tell you why we brought you here? To cure you.To make you sane."


"Madness is like an alternative residence. When sanity chases you out of home, take shelter in madness."


"Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment."


"In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time to time that is death, the deaths of those we love, but the third and most constant darkness is with us everyday, at all hours of every day, is the darkness of the mind, the pettiness and meanness and hatred, which we have invited into ourselves, and which we pay out with generous interest."



"It got so bad that Al thoughtmaybe it washimso he went to a shrinkand askedand the shrink said,"you're one of the sanest menI've ever met."poor Al.that made him feelworse than ever."


"It was as if the main screw in his head, which held his whole life together, had become stripped. The screw would not go in, would not come out, but turned in the same groove without catching hold, and it was impossible to stop turning it."


"So, yeah, insane people give me hope. Courage to go on being sane and alive, always with the cure at hand, should I ever tire and need it: madness."


"Illusions can and do create PHYSICAL Dis-Ease within our bodies. So it's most important to master our thoughts, to become cognizant of what we are spending our precious mental energy on each moment of every day."


"Depression has been likened to both a black cloud and a black dog. For someone like Kelsea, the black cloud is the right metaphor. She is surrounded by it, immersed within it, and there is no obvious way out. What she needs to do is try to contain it, get it into the form of the black dog. It will still follow her around wherever she goes; it will always be there. But at least it will be separate, and will follow her lead."


"Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well."


"Billy covered his head with his blanket again. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away...She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all."


"To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death."


"Ignore the loneliness, enjoy your presence."


"Peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with the contents of your mind."


"It almost occurred; It almost got hold of my purity, Just as it headed for the war within my being,I fed it a light so bright; It thought it almost had control of me. Depression is just a dis-ease, So; Let your mind be free."


"My bed is the magical place I love to overthink like a PSYCHO."


"The greatest war every fought, and are still fighting, where more people have been defeated and died, is the war within."


"I think the idea of a 'mental health day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'i don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide."


"I wonder how long it would take him to realize I'm right as sin - it's the rest of the world that's wrong. I'm not even sure how I qualify for admission to Aspen Springs. Does wanting to die equal losing your mind?"


"Mechanics of Mind: I feel the greatest source of despair stems not from what we do on a daily basis, but the pace at which our mind thinks vis-a-vis our progression in real life that matters - the greater the gap the more the despair!"


"Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I'm not ashamed of my illness. I've been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too."


"He: What's the matter with you?Me: Nothing.Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her."


"Yes I'm Bipolar but I'm as normal as you except the times when my mind thinks like two."


"When the loneliest place on earth is in your mind, move out!"


"God knows I often retire to my bed wishing (at times even hoping) that I might never wake up; and in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun once again, and am miserable."


"Madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you, but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there." 'We've all felt that.' 'And all of us, one way or another, are mad."


"A depressed person doesn't want you to try and cheer them up. It makes us sick."


"Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed."


"Going mad is the beginning of a process. It is not supposed to be the end result."


"But laugh, laugh, laugh, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart."


"The body tries to stop the mind from killing itself, no matter the cost. It is only the lack of strength, the fatigue that lets the jumpers fall at last."


"If you ever felt alone, come to my cottage and drink the whole bottle; it is not so bad to be abnormal for a while."


"Keep negative people long meters away from you; their presence is a threat to your high self-esteem! Job, the man of God kept his wife afar before he could make it again!"


"Insane people give me hope.""What!!!!" I almost dropped my beer."The insane have decided to stay on," Crumley said. "They love life so much that, rather than destroy it, they go behind a self-made wall to hide. Pretend not to hear, but the do hear. Pretend not to see, but see. Insanity says: I hate living but love life. Hate the rules but do like me. So, rather than drop in graves, I hide out. Not in liquor, nor in bed under sheets, nor in a needle's prick or snuffs of white powder, but in madness. On my own shelf, in my own rafters, under my own silent roof. So, yeah, insane people give me hope. Courage to go on being sand and alive, always with the cure at hand, should I ever tire and need it: madness."



"When I really worry about something, I don t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don t go. I m too worried to go. I don t want to interrupt my worrying to go."


"There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics."


"A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety."
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