I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, ‚I am deaf.‘ If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong. I mean you can’t remember everything all the time, and especially if you’re having hard times personally, things going on that you – you know, and then people make it worse. And that makes you feel worse.

When I was 11 I became very depressed. It had a lot to do with the climate and ecological crisis. I thought everything was just so wrong and nothing was happening and there’s no point in anything.

Hatred is settled anger.

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviours.

Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.

I don’t carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.

I didn’t get depressed, I don’t get depressed.

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

Don’t just let the devil use your mind as a garbage dump.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. It means to think of something over and over.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

No, I’m not anguished and tormented.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

I don’t like being alone.

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

I’m perpetually lonely.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

Dumbness comes from the fact that a child is born deaf and that it consequently never learns how to articulate, for it is by the medium of hearing that such instruction is acquired.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.