Judith Guest Quotes

In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always suspect an opponent, and note who suffers most because of the patient's condition. Usually this is a member of the family.

I believe that all the important people in my life prior to 1982 were victimized by my illness.

Fame made me develop a panic disorder.

My wife and I have a schizophrenic son. We didn't want to accept this for 30 years, so we put him under great pressure when we shouldn't have. He just wanted to be looked after, and we didn't respect that. We tried to make him independent.

When you have parents who are a little out of their minds, somebody has to take responsibility.

No matter how much you urge them to relax and how much you mean it, your child probably grapples with highly stressful environments away from home, whether it's where they go to school, the teams they play on, or the peers in their social circle. Most teenagers I know long for empathy from their parents about their struggle.

My mother was crazy.

In the summer of 1956, my mother was pregnant with me, which caused my father to confess his fear that I was going to be too much of a burden for him because he had a history of depression.

My mom had the breakdown for the family, and I went into therapy for all of us.

Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family's mental health.

I don't think it's very healthy to hold people to idealized views. I think that's a certain stage in life, something kids do. You have to go through that idealistic phase with your parents, but at a certain point, you need to see people as just people. And everyone's pretty similar. I think if you're in the showbusiness, like any high-stakes business, the highs and lows can make you a manic-depressive person, if you weren't that way to start with. 'Cause it's just so crazy on your psyche. A lot of it has to do with people thinking they're greater than someone else.

The thing about crazy people; they don't know they are crazy, that's what make them crazy.

She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

You have to hide what you are and it's really stressful and very bad for your self esteem. Because it's not obvious to people that you are ill, they treat you as if you're a pain in the ass, then you beat yourself up and you are already beating yourself up as a part of mental illness.

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.

Crazy isn´t always what they say it is. It´s not always the old woman wearing sneakers and a skirt and a scarf, wandering around with a shopping cart, hollering at no one, nothing, tumbling through years in her head. No. Sometimes it is a girl wearing boots and jeans and a sweater, arms crossed in front of her, shivering, wandering through the streets at night, all night, murmuring to no one, nothing, tumbling through the strange unreal dimensions in her head.

A lot of sad things have happened to my friends' children, people you knew as babies. They've been killed or become crazy or all kinds of tragic things. There are some people whose children haven't talked to them in fifteen years. There's all kind of meshugaas in this world.

There's no shame in being crazy.

I guess the most difficult thing for me was living up to my mom's expectations. I was always scared that if I didn't do things in this certain way, then my mom just wouldn't think I was great. That's something that was difficult for me growing up.

I didn't know there was something really wrong, because everyone was crazy. It's just that everyone else was still functional. I didn't realize that I was any worse off.

My family shouldn't have to put up with me. They're good people, solid, happy. Sometimes when I'm with them I think I'm on television.

There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can't know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy.

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.

If you’re not crazy there’s something wrong with you. Willie Nelson