Quotes from Kay Redfield Jamison

for manics anyway, mania is a natural extension of the economy.

Schubert's posthumous Piano Sonata in B-flat, D. 960. Its

Having heard so often, and so believably, John Donne's bell tolling softly that "Thou must die," one turns more sharply to life, with an immediacy and appreciation that would not otherwise exist.

Mania is a strange and driving force, a destroyer, a fire in the blood.

People who aren't as exuberant as you are get really irritated with you.

I have suffered from exuberance, from being scattered, a lack of focus, he says. Conflicting enthusiasms caused him to switch scientific fields several times, from high-energy astrophysics to space physics, to particles and fields, and finally to planetary science.

I aged rapidly during those months, as one must with such loss of one's self, with such proximity to death, and such distance from shelter.

The combination of curiosity and joy so characteristic of scientific work calls to mind the galumphing quality of exuberant play: watching, chasing, an idea first up one path and then down another, tussling with competitors, and flat-out exhilaration in the chase. Creative science and play are fun; they promise the unexpected.

Vincent van Gogh, for one, wrote that his exuberant mood propelled not just his art but his speech: There are moments, he said, when I am twisted by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy, like a Greek oracle on the tripod. And then I have great readiness of speech.)

379Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.

Another is the common use of print or visual media to present case histories of adolescents who have attempted or committed suicide. The purpose is to teach students how to identify friends who may be at risk for suicidal behavior. However, the method may have a paradoxical effect in that students may closely identify with the problems portrayed by the case examples and may come to see suicide as the logical solution to their own problems.

Time finally did bring relief. But it took its own, and not terribly sweet, time in doing so.

The elemental human desire to add meaning and permanence to life-to avoid the fate rendered by Dante as no more memorial/ Than foam in water or smoke upon the wind - take on additional depth and urgency for those who have intense moods and brooding dispositions.

Manic-depressive illness, often seasonal, is recurrent by nature; left untreated, individuals with this disease can expect to experience many, and generally worsening, episodes of depression and mania. It is important to note, however, that most individuals who have manic-depressive illness are normal most of the time; that is, they maintain their reason and their ability to function personally and professionally.

One joy, the Chinese believe, scatters a hundred griefs...

the exuberant are easily engaged. And exuberance is, in its very effusiveness, liable to misconstruction and suspicion, often misinterpreted as sexual interest when none is intended, or as implying a more sustained emotional commitment than is warranted by the high spirits that, however persuasive, may prove to be transient or directed in any number of places.

Cocaine, hashish, opium, Ecstacy: all seduce with the promise of rapture or exuberance-and then they collect.

Language, on the other hand, newer to the brain, may be more linked to those parts that regulate dopamine and thereby connected to pleasure.

There was a fine-tuning of Richard's and my temperaments during the years we lived with his heart disease, lymphoma, and lung cancer. Before, our differences had triggered sporadic tension; now our basic natures served us better. Our sensibilities and quirks evolved into something more shared and complex, more mingled.

We put our faith in things great and small. We assign to them meaning they may actually have, or meaning that we need for them to have in order to carry on.

Mood disorders , in addition to exhibiting seasonal patterns, frequently show pronounced diurnal rhythms as well.

The fates and character of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.

The review of studies of seasonal patterns for peak months of occurrence for episodes of mania and depression indicates that there is a consistency of findings despite the methodological problems intrinsic to such research.

the usual limits of understanding another's mind are compounded when trying to understand Lowell, a man who thought in metaphor, lived in history, and whose mind was engaged in a restless, stupendously elaborate game of three-dimensional chess. Lowell's mind was of a lurching, revising originality.