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.

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

When your soul is resting, your emotions are okay, your mind is okay, and your will is at peace with God, not resisting what He’s doing.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

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

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

My body is weird. I wake up when the sun comes up, and it’s hard for me to go to sleep. My thoughts just take over.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

As we dread any disease that undermines the health of the body, so should we deplore contention, which is a corroding canker of the spirit.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

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

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

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.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

The story with anorexic girls – nobody works with anorexic girls. That has nothing to do with fashion.

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

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!

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

I’ve suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Hatred is self-punishment.

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

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

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.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

When I get down, I don’t waller around for long.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

In Germany, they all thought I was a bit mental, very emotional.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

I don’t worry about stress. I create it.

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

Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

There’s certainly a side of me that isn’t completely… sane. Or completely ‚even‘ all the time. We all have our dark sides.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.