Ned Vizzini Quotes

The work of a psychotherapist involves being empathic and insightful with one's patients without getting too lost in their painful stories to be helpful.

It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.

Everything human is alien to me.

I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession.

Look...at...me..." he whispered. The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.

He put his cold hands on either side of my face and fixed his golden eyes on mine. "Would you please tell me what you're thinking? Before I go mad?

She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart

We have to know people who are outside of our own circle, we have to reach out to people we don't know, we have to protect people who are in tremendous danger. And we also have to not get burned out and let our fear and anxiety and depression sink us. So there's lots of things we have to do right now!

Doctor." Gideon set one ankle on the opposite knee and settled back, creating a picture of unyielding decisiveness. "The only way I'm keeping my hands off her is if I'm dead. Find another way to fix us." Chapter 3 pg 50

But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.

You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.

She thought she brought a gift of compassion for those exhausted souls who had not received a chest portion from the people who raised them. If compassion and therapy did not work, she could always send her patients to the local pharmacy for drugs.

... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.

I remember when I used to sit on hospital beds and hold people s hands, people used to be shocked because they d never seen this before. To me it was quite normal.

There is an old story about the boy at Eton who committed suicide. The other boys in his house were gathered together and asked if any of them could suggest a reason for the tragedy. After a long silence a small boy in the front put up his hand: 'Could it have been the food, sir?

Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.

So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as alone as we fear.

I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.

What? My head doctor says I'm not supposed to censor my thoughts. It's part of my therapy.

I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.

Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.

A man goes to a psychiatrist. "Nobody listens to me!" The doctor says, "Next!"

Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me.

I grew up caring about people and I would say again, that's what made me who I am. I became a doctor for what I like to call "healthy reasons." Not because I'm fascinated by the human body or want to understand death, but I like people and I want to help them. That also became my problem, because I couldn't help everyone, I couldn't fix everyone.

Some people can very easily switch off and be guilt free, not that what I'm doing is about guilt, but they can completely disconnect and not care because it doesn't affect them. I've always really cared about what happens and felt a certain responsibility.