Kay Redfield Jamison Quotes

…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.

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

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.

Among the lying schemes of the devil is deluding the person who commits suicide into thinking that death will relieve him from his troubles.

I hate myself, and I want to die

When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.

Melancholy suicide. - This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.

There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.

I have at times tried to imagine the despair which leads to suicide, attempted to conjure up the slew and slop of darkness in which only death appears as a pinprick of light: in other words, the exact opposite of the normal condition of life.

There is only one prospect worse than being chained to an intolerable existence: The nightmare of a botched attempt to end it.

Suicide only really frightens those who are never tempted by it and never will be, for its darkness only welcomes those who are predestined to it.

If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think 'How lucky are the dead.

Neurotics dream of a good life, or a great suicide note.

When you commit your life to something and it doesn't work out, it is a tough place to be. Suicide can be the spiritual reprieve of a faithless person. I knew I could always just end it, and there was solace in that.

Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me.

Death is what men want when the anguish of living is more than they can bear.

When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death.

And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them

I could not bear the deep freeze settling around my bones at the thought that yet another attempt to get out of my life alive would end in disappointment. Time became palpable and viscous. Every minute, every second, every nanosecond, wrapped around my spine so that my nerves tightened and ached. I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be.

I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.

Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74)

A difference in self loathing? Please. The only difference between a gun and a rope is the time it takes to tie the knot.

I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

It (suicide) became a possibility like Maybe when I grow up, I will be dead. Life was a cake that looked good on the bakery shelf but turned to sawdust and salt when I ate it.