An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

mind-and-cognition

• My thoughts were so fast that I couldn't remember the beginning of a sentence halfway through. Fragments of ideas, images, sentences, raced around and around in my mind like tigers.

  UM-001

• 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 feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars.

  UM-005

self-and-identity

• I was used to my mind being my best friend. Now, all of a sudden, my mind had turned on me: it mocked me for my vapid enthusiasms; it laughed at all of my foolish plans.

  UM-011

• Many years of living with the cyclic upheavals of manic-depressive illness has made me more philosophical, better armed, and more able to handle the inevitable swings of mood and energy.

  UM-015

trauma-and-survival

• At one point I bought a gun, but, in a transient wave of rational thought, I told my psychiatrist; reluctantly, I got rid of it.

  UM-012

• The morbidity of my mind was astonishing: Death and its kin were constant companions. Everything was a reminder that everything ended at the charnel house.

  UM-004