Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, sui….

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-dep….

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changin….

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and….

I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy, overwhelming des….

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I ha….

Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and….

Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting.

People are more impulsive and they get slightly less impulsive as they get older and the impulsiveness interacting with the depression is particularl….

Exuberance is a gift of grace that allows us to move on, to seek, to love again..

I think psychotherapy saves lives and is hugely meaningful and I think that one of the unfortunate aspects of prescription drugs working well is that….

I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, ….

I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or bu….

the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was o….

Mania can be as terrifying as it gets. It is certainly as insane as one gets and so it's frightening when it gets out of control, but there are perio….

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put….

Everything previously moving with the grain is now against - you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blacke….

Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe..

If people can talk about having breast cancer, why can't people who have mental illness talk about mental illness? Until we're able to do that, we're….

Without science, there would be no such hope..

Tumultuouness,if coupled to discipline and cool mind,is not such a bad sort of thing.That unless one wants to live a stunningly boring life,one ought….