Lanford Wilson Quotes

Everyone always told me that I had the symptoms of a P.O.W.

At night when I used to sleep, I was thinking all the time that shall I put a knife under my pillow.

I live in a state of hypersensitivity, and I've always had this feeling that something bad is going to happen to myself, or my wife and children. This manifests itself in different fears and visions.

I very often have night terrors. Just think of the worst possible situation, and it's a regular thing for me. I've died in my sleep twenty-three different ways.

At 17, the first time I saw a dead body, I froze. By 31 it was a natural occurrence for me, and no group of people should live like that.

I became paranoid for a long time: I thought that people were out to harm me.

I have friends who have had PTSD, and you can get it from other things than war.

I spent four days and four nights just covered in blood, falling in the water.

Over a period of 11 months, I was constantly afraid that Youth Care would lock me up. It was all a frightening and traumatic experience. So often, these terrible memories come to me. I can't ignore them.

I love driving, but sometimes, I'm not too good at it because I spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror if I know I'm being followed. You don't respond like, 'Oh, there's paparazzi.' It's more like, 'There's a man, and he's going to attack me.' That's how your body responds.

When you're traumatized, you pick out one thing you remember more than anything else.

I think my character's getting to the point where he can't even eat spaghetti with red sauce anymore, where he has horrible nightmares, he can't sleep anymore.

The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.

I think everything is going to be devastatingly sad - when the phone rings, I know somebody in my family's been hurt, somebody's going to die. I'm sure a therapist would go, 'That's not a good way to live,' but every time it's not that bad thing, I'm so thankful and appreciative.

Quite a few of the dogs that come back from Afghanistan or Iraq or police dogs that are involved in violent confrontations where there's gunfire can in fact exhibit the symptoms and suffer from PTSD.

The release of 'Lungs' was so hard. It was terrifying, because it was the first time doing everything. The first experiences of media exposure were almost paralysing. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of the studio - it sent me a bit mad.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

With the situation I was in when I was shot down, I self-identified as having PTSD.

For like four or five months of my life I was too scared to like, move around and reach out for things because I was worried that I'd my hands would run into glass, like I could reach up and if I reached up and knocked on the air it would make a noise. I couldn't look at the sky because I was worried that I see a crack.

I had nightmares after being with the national team. You shouldn't have things like that.

Once you've had a panic attack you live in fear that another one is going to come. From the second it's gone, every moment every day is about the next one.

PTSD occurs following a trauma that was so awful that in retrospect you don't understand how you survived. What that causes is an extreme feeling of vulnerability that you get past but that doesn't go away.

Paranoia: the gift of the survivor and the burden of the overtired, stressed, and terrified.

I compare it to being in a car accident. There's so much adrenaline rushing through you that you remember being in the accident but you don't remember any of the details.

Columbine was so frightening. And the media took off with it, like everything else, so it instilled more fear in people. You're looking around at school for kids like the ones who committed the shootings, and you feel wrong for doing that, you know?