Elyn R. Saks Quotes

#1. All my life, books had been the life raft, the safe haven, the place I ran to when nothing else worked.

Elyn R. Saks

#2. In my experience, the words "now just calm down" almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to.

Elyn R. Saks

#3. There's a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life ... We who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.

Elyn R. Saks

#4. Don't focus on it," she said. "Don't define yourself in terms of something which even many highly trained and gifted professionals do not fully understand.

Elyn R. Saks

#5. The human brain comprises about 2 percent of a person's body weight, but it consumes upward of 20 pcent of that body's oxygen intake, and it controls 100 percent of that body's actions.

Elyn R. Saks

#6. Nothing I can do. There will be raging fires, and hundreds, maybe thousands of people lying dead in the streets. And it will all - all of it - be my fault.

Elyn R. Saks

#7. There are forces of nature and circumstance that are beyond our control, let alone our understanding, and to insist on victory in the face of this, to accept nothing less, is just asking for a soul-pummeling. The simple truth is, not every fight can be won.

Elyn R. Saks

#8. No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness.

Elyn R. Saks

#9. I was afraid the staff would laugh at me - and as frightened as I was, the thought of derision frightened me even more. In retrospect, it was a life-threatening deception, somewhat along the lines of hiding recurrent chest pains from one's cardiologist from embarrassment. Nearly

Elyn R. Saks

#10. Mental illness is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.

Elyn R. Saks

#11. Some truths that were too difficult and frightening to know.

Elyn R. Saks

#12. The humanity we all share is more important than the mental illnesses we may not

Elyn R. Saks

#13. My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

Elyn R. Saks

#14. Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.

Elyn R. Saks