Manic Quotes

“[ ] manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's dicourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“Stories don't always have to end happily.. Sometimes it's just enough that they end.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“...love is a chemical imbalance, too. That perilous highs and desperate lows and extravagant flurries of mood are not always symptoms of a broken mind, but signs of a beating heart.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“True beauty is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“Was drug induced happy still happy? Was it the right kind of happy? Did it count?”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“The cruelest curse of the disease is also its most sacred promise: You will not feel this way forever.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“The world is essentially bipolar: driven to extremes but defined by flux. Saints are always just a stumble away from sinners. Nothing is absolute, not even death”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“The memory of sustenance is a terrible thing. Far worse, I think, than actual starving. Starving just kills you. Longing can gnaw away at you forever.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“I only know that my greatest victories have always been surrenders.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“If you nurture it long enough, a lie can become a life.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“Happiness is fine, in its season, but happiness out of season is a sure harbinger of doom.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“There’s a very fine line, indistinguishable at times, between charismatic and crazy.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“True beauty, I realized,is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“It’s a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can’t doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can’t wait to start looking.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“Comprendí que la autentica belleza no reside en la ausencia de fealdad sino en su aceptación.”
― Terri Cheney, Bipolar. Memorias de un estado de

“It is a testament to the sharp beauty of a life lived in extremes.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“I wanted simple and sane. Barring that, I wanted nothing. I wanted numb.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“These flies were half the size of my fist. They came at you and stuck to you with a single-minded purpose you had to admire. We were hopelessly outnumbered, but we still slapped and kicked and karate-chopped ourselves until we reached an uneasy truce.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“Thin to me meant more than pretty. It meant disciplined, empowered, in control: all the attributes I secretly knew I lacked. But mostly, the illusion of a sound and healthy body was essential camouflage. I needed it to hide the evidence of an unsound mind.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“It may have sounded like no to a glass of wine, but in truth it was no to a great many things. And yes to a great many more.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“Bridges are only kindling, I thought. I decided to torch this one. I”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“there is no line, there never was a line, and any line that might have been disappears altogether, along with all of my discretion and judgment.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“But the most striking contrast by far was me: thrilled to tears simply to be alive in such surroundings, and determined as ever to die. I never felt so bipolar in my life.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“How could I ever hope to tell a normal person about the terrors of being happy? Unless there was a damned good reason for it, something objective and verifiable like a winning bingo card or a negative biopsy, happiness wasn’t a safe harbor for me. It was just another checkpoint on the road to mania.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“The memory of sustenance is a terrible thing. Far worse, I think, than actual starving. Starving just kills you. Longing can gnaw away at you forever. But”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“It’s a well-known fact that God makes green-eyed men for one purpose only: to remind me that love is a chemical imbalance, too. That perilous highs and desperate lows and extravagant flurries of mood are not always symptoms of a broken mind, but signs of a beating heart. If”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“I realized then why I was avoiding all the other patients. They were all potential mirrors. What I really feared wasn’t the insanity of strangers. What I feared the most was my own disease. I was terrified I would catch a glimpse of myself in passing.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“I’ve never liked the telephone. It’s a noisy, shrill intruder. If it were up to me, I’d ban all phones and bring back visiting days, like in Jane Austen and Edith Wharton novels:”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“We were the Gatsby couple, or so our friends called us. We made a martini look good. It was the eighties, and he was as essential to me as shoulder pads.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir

“True beauty, I realized, is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it.”
― Terri Cheney, Manic: A Memoir