Alastair Reynolds Quotes

They drilled a hole in my head and wrapped a coil around my brain so it wouldn't bleed anymore.

It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.

If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy.

To anybody who says to me, 'I'm in character,' I say, 'You should be in an asylum.' If you don't know that you're pretending, then you should really seek medical help. I don't have patience for that stuff.

I was diagnosed with everything from schizophrenia to multiple personality disorder.

Psychiatry causes so much death.

In the early 16th century the Italian physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, a pioneer in the science of anatomy, came up with the idea that perhaps 'brain commotion' was caused by the thrust of the soft structure of the brain against the solid case of the skull.

I meet with retired football players. Some are well-dressed, some are well-spoken, but when you talk to them personally, they will admit to you that they are having problems. But they are managing their problems. They have impaired memory, they're having mood problems. They are being treated by their psychiatrists.

As well as being one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, schizophrenia can also be one of the richest learning and humanizing experiences life offers.

Hold it, Doc, a world war passed through my brain. He said, Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane.

...Someone speaks in soft tones to me and says I am psychotic, but it's going to be all right. I put on my hat, unperturbed, and ask for some crayons.

People who have visions should go see a doctor.

I am quite sure that a good number of "cures" of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane.

I was told I had brain damage. I always knew it was an unfair label. Now I have a clearer understanding of what's wrong and I feel relieved and a bit more relaxed about myself.

I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might just be perfect together - like chocolate and peanut butter.

Our prisons are full of people who think they're Napoleon..or God.

The schizophrenic may indeed be mad. He is mad. He is not ill. I have been told by people who have been through the mad experience how what was then revealed to them was veritable manna from Heaven. The person's whole life may be changed, but it is difficult not to doubt the validity of such vision. Also, not everyone comes back to us again.

Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.

Do I have a large frog in my hair? I have the sensation that something is eating my brain.

The United States were a 35-year-old man, I think he'd be in a mental institution. Violent tendencies - delusions of grandeur - medicate heavily.

Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.

Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain for the snatches and snippets of what happened, what was said, and when.

If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.

A mental healer may be a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist may or may not be a mental healer.

All of your brain cells rotting from weed, feeling like if you ain’t got it life’s not as complete.