Madness Quotes

“When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Madness will push you anywhere it wants. It never tells you where you're going, or why. It tells you it doesn't matter. It persuades you. It dangles something sparkly before you, shimmering like that water patch on the road up ahead. You will drive until you find it, the treasure, the thing you most desire.
You will never find it. Madness may mock you so long you will die of the search. Or it will tire of you, turn its back, oblivious as you go flying. The car is beside you, smoking, belly-up, still spinning its wheels.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“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.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Because I'm not, in fact, depressed, Prozac makes me manic and numb - one of the reasons I slice my arm in the first place is that I'm coked to the gills on something utterly wrong for what I have.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“At first it's bliss. It's drunken, heady, intoxicating. It swallows the people we were - not particuarly wonderful people, but people who did our best, more or less - and spits out the monsters we are becoming.
Our friends despise us. We are an epic. Everything is grand, crashing, brilliant, blinding. It's the Golden Age of Hollywood, and we are a legend in our own minds, and no one outside can fail to see that we are headed for hell, and we won't listen, we say they don't understand, we pour more wine, go to the parties, we sparkle, fly all over the country, we're on an adventure, unstoppable, we've found each other and we race through our days like Mr. Toad in his yellow motorcar, with no idea where the brakes are and to hell with it anyway, we are on fire, drunk with something we call love.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“I’m sick. It’s true. It isn’t going to go away. All my life, I’ve thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I’ve always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I’d be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone else.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“...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.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Uncle Joe used to spend a fair amount of time in the loony bin. My family wasn't bothered by his regular trips to and from 'the facility'--they'd shrug and say, There goes Joe, and they'd put him in the car and take him in. One day Uncle Frank...was driving Uncle Joe to the crazy place. When they got there, Joe asked Frank to drop him off at the door while Frank went and parked the car. Frank didn't think much of it, and dropped him off.

Joe went inside, smiled at the nurse, and said, 'Hi. I'm Frank Hornbacher. I'm here to drop off Joe. He likes to park the car, so I let him do that. He'll be right in.' The nurses nodded knowingly. The real Frank walked in. The nurse took his arm and guided him away, murmuring the way nurses always do, while Frank hollered in protest, insisting that he was Frank, not Joe. Joe, quite pleased with himself, gave Frank a wave and left.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“In our absence, the violet early evening light pours in the bay window, filling the still room like water poured into a glass. The glass is delicate. The thin, tight surface of the liquid light trembles. But it does not break. Time does not pass. Not yet.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“You know those afternoons," he asks, drawing a shaking breath, "where you’re just going along, doing fine, and then afternoon comes and it feels like you’ve just got the wind knocked out of you and everything is wrong?" He sighs and slowly pushes himself so he’s sitting upright. His shoulders are slumped. "That’s all," he says. "It’s just one of those afternoons."

We are silent for a minute. Then he lies back down on the couch.

I should say I love him. I should say it will be all right. But it won’t.

I walk down the hall to my bedroom. I lie down on my side and stare at the wall, the blue-flowered wallpaper next to my nose. Despite my best efforts, I start to cry.

I know those afternoons.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Here's how you make absolutely sure that you'll keep getting crazier by the day:

- Ignore everything your psychiatrist tells you. Disregard all his warnings about the way you're living your life - in fact, do absolutely everything he tells you not to.

- Don't always take your pills. They're a hassle, and what if they make you dull? You don't need them. And if you're going to take the pills, take them with a glass of wine. It will make the mood swings even more exciting.

- Don't sleep; you've got to make sure your body clock is as fucked up as possible. The less you sleep, the more manic you'll get, until soon you'll go completely over the edge.

- Drink caffeine. Tons of it. Take your morning pills with coffee. It can't hurt.

- Work around the clock - it's important to put yourself under as much stress as possible.

- Eating normally would stabilize your blood sugar, so don't do that; it's better to keep your body in as unstable a state as you possibly can for maximum results.

- And, above all else, drink like a fish.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in. I am so terrified of myself and of the vast, frightening world, that the psych ward, with its safe locked doors, sounds like a relief.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“And then the horror sets in. All that time I wasn’t crazy; I was, in fact, crazy. It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. Bipolar disorder. Manic depression. I’m sick. It’s true. It isn’t going to go away. All my life, I’ve thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I’ve always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I’d be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“I am in the zone, the perfect balance between manic and drunk, I am mellow, I’m cool, cool as cats. I’ve found the answer, the thing that takes the edge off, smoothes out the madness, sends me sailing, lifts me up and lets me fly.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Here's the hell of it: madness doesn't announce itself. There isn't time to prepare for its coming. It shows up without calling and sits in your kitchen ashing in your plant. You ask how long it plans to stay; it shrugs its shoulders, gets up, and starts digging through the fridge.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“As I head back up the stairs, I hear the dryer make a sound of great mechanical distress, nnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and I pause for only a moment before I decide that if I leave, I will no longer intimidate the machine, and it will then do its job very well without me.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“It's my secret, my saviour. It's reliable. It saves me from the unpredictable mind, where the thoughts are a cesspool, swirling, eddying with rip tide. When I starve, the sinking, pressing, black sadness lifts off me and I feel weightless, empty, light. No racing thoughts, no need to move, no reasons to hide in the dark. When I throw up, I purge all the fears, paranoia, the thoughts. The eating disorder gives me comfort. I couldn't let it go if I tried.

It is what I need so badly, a homemade replacement for what a psychiatrist would prescribe for me if he knew: a mood stabilizer. My eating disorder is the first thing I have found that works. It becomes indispensable as soon as it begins. I am calm in my starvation, all my apprehensions focused. No need to control my mind-I control my body, so my mood levels out. I live in single-minded pursuit of something very specific: thinness, death. I act with intention, discipline. I am free.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“We're like little kids. We are little kids, but don't tell us that—we're having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties—the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine. I sometimes feel as if I've raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I'm fine. It's fine. It's all going to be fine. Crazy people don't have dinner parties, do they? No.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“There are other kinds of damage, to the people in your life, to your sense of who you are and what you can do, to your future”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“He is the most wonderful person alive. I am suddenly struck by the fact that he is unlike anyone else in the world. How many people could love me like this? How many people would visit every day at six o'clock, without fail? And bring me dinner, and a grocery bag of fruit? Who could? Who would? Why would they?”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“There is no right,” she says. “There’s the best you can do. And that’s fine. That’s normal.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life