Cyril Connolly Quotes

Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.

After that I couldn't show my face outside. I lost my identity and balance. I was still living with my parents, and they were my only friends. For so many people, this thing with the nurse was confirmation that I must be mad or mentally ill.

I didn't want to be the daughter of the crazy people.

Rationally, I knew these fears were ridiculous. There were no signs, unfortunately, and I would never blame anyone for another person's suicide. But if everyone felt that way, there wouldn't be this cruel stigma, would there?

With what all these people are saying, do you think that anybody wants to be around me? They all think that I did this on purpose? That I knew that I was positive, for so many years? I feel now that I'm going to be attacked if anybody sees me or if I go to the office.

Everybody tends to think I'm crazy, which is the biggest problem in my life.

I think suicide is sort of like cancer was 50 years ago. People don't want to talk about it, they don't want to know about it. People are frightened of it, and they don't understand, when actually these issues are medically treatable.

Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.

There's stigmas attached to anything that makes you, in the public's eye, seem weak. So of course, you know, you're in a business where your image, and the way people perceive you, you are taught, is important.

Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name; it is a tragedy

I wanted to end my life so bad and was in my car ready to go down that ramp into the water, and I did go part way, but I stopped. I went again and stopped. I then got out of the car and stood by the car a nervous wreck.

That's like making fun of a maniac because his brain isn't completely right, because he isn't in the norm.

Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.

If you say you've had a nervous breakdown or things aren't right mentally, people run away from you. They think you're from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,' you know.

I am not as crazy as people think.

I grew up in a family of secrets; there was a lot of pathology in the family.

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.

I had said to some pastor that I was having thoughts, and the church turned on me. They went to my mom and said, So sorry about your son.

I suffered from eating disorders when I was just a kid. I did not like me or the way I looked. But back then, you could not tell anyone.

My own life was filled with so much love and joy that when depression struck, it was like a prison door slamming shut and I was being placed in an isolation cell. No one else could possibly be feeling what I was. I hated my depression and all of its symptoms.

One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.

What bothers you isn't so much whether you're beautiful or not. What bothers you is the way that people stare.

When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.

'The Mark' I played a psychiatrist. And in the '50's everybody went to a psychiatrist because if you didn't, you'd have nothing to talk about at cocktail parties.