Quotes & Sayings About Having Schizophrenia

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. — Margaret Atwood

In the United States, people with depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are losing twelve to twenty years in life expectancy compared to people not in the mental health system. (176) — Robert Whitaker

The whole schizophrenia angle interested me. When I first started working on it, I thought I would play up that angle more than I ended up doing. The religious aspect of the story was also a draw. — Chester Brown

What's he doing?" Raine asked. "He's not talking to me." "Grab him by the nuts and twist." I glared at her over my laptop. To us, our characters were real, living, breathing people that sometimes didn't cooperate. There was a famous quote that being a write was an acceptable form of schizophrenia. It was absolutely true. The voices never stopped, except when they were being jerks. — Chelsea M. Cameron

I can't imagine a secular life, a spiritual life, an intellectual life, a physical life. I mean, we would be completely wrought with schizophrenia, wouldn't we? — Terry Tempest Williams

Schizophrenia affects many people, both the people with the disorder and those who love and support them. Research is continuing and as advances in medical knowledge continue there is an increasingly likelihood that the disorder can be successfully treated — Carol Franklin

You've dated a shoplifter. A drug addict. A girl who claimed that her roommate kept her locked in a dumpster. She was admitted to Mulberry not too long ago, if I recall, right? They diagnosed her with schizophrenia." Reece nodded reluctantly. "For the record, I only dated her for two months. And also for the record, she's doing a lot better." "Hmm," Camden replied. "There's the one who put salt on all her food then complained incessantly of bloating problems. Oh yeah! And the one who wanted you to tie her up and beat the shit out of her every night." "All right already!" Reece snapped. "I get it. I haven't had the best of luck with normal women. — S. Walden

Schizophrenia demons live in my head. — Wesley Willis

But unlike people with psychotic conditions like schizophrenia, they are not going insane at all. They are, if anything, suddenly overly aware of reality and existence and of the ways in which their own experience is a distortion of a "normal" sense of a real self. Depersonalization, — Daphne Simeon

Before I tell you, I have to know three things," I said.
"Okay."
"One, are you sitting down?"
"Yes."
"Two, are you mentally stable?"
"More than you'll ever be."
Well, that was uncalled for. "And three, how do you spell schizophrenia?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to see if you'd tell me. — Darynda Jones

Please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics.' There are people with schizophrenia. — Elyn Saks

But you have gift!"
"Gift? I was electrocuted and disfigured, and now I think my fucking television is talking to me. That's called schizophrenia. — Brian K. Vaughan

I spent a lot of time reading blogs by mothers who had children with varying degrees of neural dysfunction, from schizophrenia to all sorts of different issues. And honestly, I don't think it's different for anybody. There's no right way to make sure your child will be emotionally and mentally healthier. It's just frustrating. — Vera Farmiga

Don't say that poetry, my friend, is beautiful
or powerful
for there is no powerful or beautiful poetry
There is poetry that strikes you, secretly
with the diseases of writing and schizophrenia, and you rave
and your self leaves you for another — Mahmoud Darwish

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience. — David Mamet

The sound of her phone shocked her out of the dark world that was currently playing in front of her eyes from the book in her lap. She wondered sometimes, why she bothered with books. If she wanted to hallucinate, all she had to do was get up in the morning. — Allie Burke

Do you have children, Dominick?"
"Nope."
"Well if you did," she said, "you would most likely read them not only Curious George but also fables and fairy tales. Stories where humans outsmart witches, where giants and ogres are felled and good triumphs over evil. Your parents read them to you and your brother. Did they not?"
"My mother did," I said.
"Of course she did. It is the way we teach our children to cope with a world too large and chaotic for them to comprehend. A world that seems, at times, too random. Too indifferent. Of course, the religions of the world will do the same for you, whether you're a Hindu or a Christian or a Rosicrucian. They're brother and sister, really; children's fables and religious parables ... — Wally Lamb

Self leadership requires us to lead and motivate ourselves. But it looks a heck of a lot like schizophrenia during a ropes course. — Ryan Lilly

When I visited Guantanamo Bay several years ago, I met a team of psychiatrists treating the detainees. When I asked how they distinguished between, say, schizophrenia or bipolarity and a bedrock religious commitment to holy war, they couldn't answer. — Monica Crowley

An old joke puts its thus, "when a man speaks to a god its prayer , when a god speaks to a man its schizophrenia" ... Many people hear voices without suffering any of the debilitating and dysfunctional effects associated with schizophrenia, some treat these as sources of inspiration of develop religious ideas around them, others become mediums or occultists. — Peter J. Carroll

Courtney was a doctor herself. She diagnosed herself with Schizophrenia years ago, but didn't take any medication. The point of her barely leaving her home or having limited conversations with people, was to keep her mood swings under control. — Nako

This is the story of V and me.
Look. Each person has the possibilities of being simultaneously several beings, having several lives. The good family man doesn't have a sense of responsibility. Simultaneously, he's my angel. Simultaneously, his family's a pack of incontinent dogs. In front of men such as him who believe they're respectable, I love to talk about who they really are, the people they don't want to know and socially and politically chastise. Look. I have loved and worshiped a pig.
This society hates and locks up its madness because they hate and lock up themselves. I know the system of schizophrenia. Nevertheless I loved a pig and couldn't stop. — Kathy Acker

Maybe having schizophrenia is my big fuck-you to the status quo. Only, I guess at this point, being normal and well-adjusted would be, like, the biggest fuck-you of them all. So I guess I'll just try to shoot for that, if I can. — Nic Sheff

Do right-handed people live longer than lefties?

Then again, there are some things about lefties that can't be explained so easily. For whatever reason, whether it's the pressures of living in a world designed for righties, or all the talk of having shorter life spans, lefties have higher rates of depression, drug abuse, allergies, and schizophrenia. But lefties also have an advantage in sports like fencing, tennis and baseball, not to mention greater academic success and higher IQs. Five of America's last eleven presidents were lefties, even though they make up only 10 percent of the American population." (I believe Obama is a leftie as well, making that 6 of the last 12 presidents). — Anahad O'Connor

My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life. — Elyn R. Saks

No one has schizophrenia, like having a cold. The patient has not "got" schizophrenia. He is schizophrenic. — R.D. Laing

It's been insane. From Whitey Bulger to the Mad Hatter, you can imagine the schizophrenia. — Johnny Depp

When it comes to animals, we suffer from moral schizophrenia. — Gary L. Francione

Now, Emily didn't make a sound. There was something more defining about the soundless reality that condemned the paradigm of passion. — Allie Burke

So the poor translator must not just go back and forth between two languages, but if he is worthy of his calling must shift between two selves, with all the perils of this induced schizophrenia. — Gregory Rabassa

You have got to get creative if you want anyone to notice your goddamn teenage angst. — Nic Sheff

An estimated 3.5 million people with serious mental illnesses are going without treatment (Kessler et al. 2001). That is scandalous. But mentally ill people are not the cause of the violence problem. If schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression were cured, our society's problem of violence would diminish by only about 4% (Swanson 1994). — Daniel W. Webster

The ever quickening advances of science made possible by the success of the Human Genome Project will also soon let us see the essences of mental disease. Only after we understand them at the genetic level can we rationally seek out appropriate therapies for such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disease. — James D. Watson

...Such a subcontinental thing to do, no? To bury what is difficult and painful in cerebral things. To let the intellect soak up the blood from a fight. This is what we do. Not because we lack sensitivity, but because we lack the right language for emotion. English has such a jealous hold over us, but it is a hard and brittle thing in our hands. It doesn't suit the easy melodrama of our natures. And it has a way of making matters of the heart seem at once inert and deeply shameful. So what do upper-class Indian men do when they are too wretched to do anything else? They talk of the Russians! Of Dostoevsky and Belinsky, of "cultural schizophrenia" and "the lackeyishness of thinking"... — Aatish Taseer

Sometimes I think people take reality for granted. — Francesca Zappia

grandiose paranoid schizophrenia. — Nancy Kress

There are things that tend to moderate with age. Schizophrenia is somewhat like that. — John Forbes Nash Jr.

It seemed to me the basic definition of mental illness, this persistent, painful inability to simply be with someone else. It might be lifelong, or it might descend like a sudden catastrophe, this blankness between ourselves and the rest of the world. The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it was hell, a life lived behind glass. The only difference between mild depression and severe schizophrenia was the amount of sound and air that seeped in. — Tracy Thompson

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! — Alison Miller

I have a son, who is a ... not an ordinary form of schizophrenia, but clearly, cannot take care of himself. And the great fear of then, of all parents is, when the parents die, who takes care of your child? And the answer is: they become homeless. — James D. Watson

I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society. — Alexis Korner

In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it. When we live in a time when the rate of misdiagnoses has shown no improvement since the 1930s, the lesson here is that it's important to always get a second opinion.
While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It's a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule. — Susannah Cahalan

Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it
and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. — Osho

I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville. — Neil Postman