Ruby Wax Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes, I get this familiar ache in my heart and a sense of stabbing emptiness around my ribcage. I don't even know what brings it on; it's just familiar like a horrible visitor. What brings me to my knees though, is the even bigger heart-hurt when I recognize this ghastly guest is back again. — Ruby Wax

Excessive chemicals eventually inhibit your immune system (the defence against infections and illnesses) making you vulnerable to viruses of every shape and size. They will lower the production of serotonin (making you feel listless and joyless as in depression) and can eventually, if they remain virulent, cause heart disease, hardening of the arteries, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Inadvertently stress will destroy you both mentally and physically unless you change the way you think about it and relate to it. With — Ruby Wax

I can't do anything too serious like Saddam Hussein, but I would like to do Bill Clinton. That'd be fun. — Ruby Wax

I always ask the booksellers to look at me and recommend a book; 9 out of 10, they get it right; it's usually a book about someone dysfunctional. To me bookstores are like brothels of imagination, each book is luring me over going, 'Read me, read me'. — Ruby Wax

Why is that when people become ill and have something wrong with any of their organs, they get sympathy from other people - except when that organ is their brain? — Ruby Wax

It is in our biology, this reptilian feeling of wanting what the next guy has. — Ruby Wax

Thoughts are not who you are, they're habitual patterns in the mind, nothing more and as soon as you see them that way, they lose their sting. I think of them as the noise of a radio in another room; I can pay attention, sing along with them if I want and also choose to ignore them. — Ruby Wax

Now we determine each other's worth by asking, 'What do you do?' If you say 'nothing', people move away from you as if you're a corpse. — Ruby Wax

I'm lucky not to have a nine-to-five job. — Ruby Wax

whenever I achieve a little something and am complimented, shortly thereafter I am swiftly kicked in the ass by karma. — Ruby Wax

I'm a misplaced American, but don't know where I was misplaced. — Ruby Wax

People who say ... they're perfectly fine [are] more insane than the rest of us. — Ruby Wax

I am lucky to have good Polish skin that doesn't wrinkle so I might be around for a few years yet. — Ruby Wax

Depressions are very cyclical, they happen once every five years. When I was on TV, yes I was effervescent, you can't fake it. It [depression] comes like the pox. — Ruby Wax

We're always surprised when something ends; everything ends, so why do we never think it's our turn? — Ruby Wax

By the time dessert arrives I am usually so drunk, I can't remember what I'm serving. — Ruby Wax

I don't combine proteins and carbohydrates. — Ruby Wax

memorizing history in school, you should picture yourself in the Battle of Hastings and pretend to lose your legs. You won't forget it then. Parietal — Ruby Wax

I have to keep reminding myself that I am their mother. Sometimes we are sitting at home and I feel like we are waiting for our mom to come home. — Ruby Wax

Being a mother is hard and it wasn't a subject I ever studied. — Ruby Wax

Gandhi said, 'There is more to life than speed'. Unfortunately he didn't tell us what, he just left us hanging while he pranced around in his nappy. To — Ruby Wax

Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me. — Ruby Wax

Jealousy I wish we could express this emotion like kids do. If someone gets something you want, you just hit them over the head and snatch it back. That's why children are so un-neurotic. They are doing what we only dream of. The — Ruby Wax

I never weigh myself, but the brutal truth of television is that they don't employ old people or fat people. — Ruby Wax

What once made you safe now drives you insane. — Ruby Wax

Like any working mother I find it hard to have a social life. But my kids are so well adjusted. There isn't a brat bone in their body so I haven't done anything that bad. — Ruby Wax

Why, if we're still breathing and eating, is there such unhappiness? Dissatisfaction is part of the deal of living because simple existence is full of contradictions; we want individuality, to stand out from the crowd, yet we want be part of a tribe. We're driven and busy and yet we want peace. And worst of all, we want things to stay the same despite the fact that everything changes — Ruby Wax

1 in 5 people have dandruff. 1 in 4 people have mental health problems. I've had both. — Ruby Wax

This disease comes with a package: shame. When any other part of your body gets sick, you get sympathy. — Ruby Wax

I knew nothing about football, then someone showed me a film of Petit and I realised how interesting the game could be. He is divine. When I met him I could barely speak, he was so gorgeous. Women will love that show. — Ruby Wax

It's the effort of trying to change things from what they are that ultimately exhausts us. Mindfulness — Ruby Wax

to fill that gap. The habit of judging ourselves is what pounds us into the ground. You're — Ruby Wax

It's so common, it could be anyone. The trouble is, nobody wants to talk about it. And that makes everything worse. — Ruby Wax

To compensate for this undercurrent of uselessness, we pretend we're all terribly important and that we have something to bring to the world. — Ruby Wax

Learning to read faces should be compulsory in schools so you can decipher what people are really thinking. — Ruby Wax

You'll notice that pain isn't solid or constant but rather a series of sensations, sometimes hard, sometimes light, and even sometimes gone altogether — Ruby Wax

College atheletes used to get a degree in bringing your pencil. — Ruby Wax

Some behaviour is more heritable than others; you may start off with some genes loaded for depression but they don't just switch on without some environmental input. No one knows if you become 'you' because of nature or nurture: it's a combination of what you're born with and how you live your life. In — Ruby Wax

I've told so many lies about my age I don't know how old I am myself. — Ruby Wax

I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously. — Ruby Wax

The ultimate freedom lies in knowing everything, including you, is in a state of flux; you're never still, you're always 'nexting'; — Ruby Wax

The essence of neuroplasticity is that what you practise you'll cultivate. If you are cruel and spiteful, you'll become expert at getting even crueller and more spiteful. If you practise being compassionate, you'll become more compassionate. That's how our brains work; the way we think or feel determines our wiring and what chemicals are coursing through our veins. If — Ruby Wax

The genes that make you shy, resilient, anxious, exuberant are shaped by maternal behaviour. If maternal behaviour changes, the genes change. Fearful baby rats were put with nurturing mother rats and were licked rather than ignored and their actual genetic expression changed, proving we're not held captive by our genes. (I — Ruby Wax

There are some lucky people who feel they experience happiness when they gaze at a cloud or walk on the beach but the rest of us only get that special tingly buzz when we've bought, won, achieved, hooked or booked something. Then our own brains give us a hit of dopamine, which makes us feel good. We don't need substances; we are our own drug dealers. The — Ruby Wax

You shouldn't run away from your problems, you need to aim straight for the heart of the beast. — Ruby Wax

Some interviewees you make friends with and some you don't. — Ruby Wax

For me mindfulness is like building a house, so the next time the tsunami that is depression comes I'll have a structure in place to resist it. — Ruby Wax

My whole career has been an act of revenge. — Ruby Wax

As far as my career or my university or my hometown went, I was on the bus out of town at the right time because I knew to walk away before I was pushed out. — Ruby Wax

Nannies love working in our house because they never know who's gonna walk through the door. — Ruby Wax

Why, when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain? — Ruby Wax

This triple-decker reflects our evolutionary development from the earliest model (single-celled bacteria) to the latest (George Clooney). Each — Ruby Wax

My ultimate fantasy is to entice a man to my bedroom, put a gun to his head and say, 'Make babies or die'. — Ruby Wax

It's an unfortunate word, 'depression', because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It's when your old personality has left town and been replaced by a block of cement with black tar oozing through your veins and mind. This is when you can't decide whether to get a manicure or jump off a cliff. It's all the same. When I was institutionalised I sat on a chair unable to move for three months, frozen in fear. To take a shower was inconceivable. What made it tolerable was while I was inside, I found my tribe - my people. They understood and unlike those who don't suffer, never get bored of you asking if it will ever go away? They can talk medication all hours, day and night; heaven to my ears. — Ruby Wax

We hold those who are on the tightest of schedules in reverence; the busier you are, the higher your status as a human being. — Ruby Wax

Much of what you see out there is manufactured by your brain, painted in like computer-generated graphics in a movie; only a very small part of the inputs to your occipital lobe comes directly from the external world, the rest comes from internal memory stores and other processes. — Ruby Wax

Critical thinking is one of our highest achievements besides eating with a fork, so when we emotionally can't get what we want, we have to think our way towards the resolution and this is where we crash and burn. — Ruby Wax

You have to be great friends and make each other laugh. We laugh a lot and neither is jealous of the other. — Ruby Wax

Thoughts aren't fact, so don't take them seriously — Ruby Wax

Only if you're kind to yourself, can you be kind to others. — Ruby Wax

In some deep, dark way we all become salacious around a disaster; our mouths water slightly when there's a real emergency. Hurricanes, typhoons, wars, shootings, epidemics; we're a little aroused because now we really have something to think about rather than our monotonous lives; something to take the focus away from our to-do list. — Ruby Wax

[With depression] you get a real sense of shame, because your friends go, 'Oh come on, show me the lump, show me the x-rays,' and of course you've got nothing to show. — Ruby Wax