Mira Bartok Quotes

#1. I felt held hostage by her illness and by the backward mental health system that once again was incapable of helping our family in crisis.

Mira Bartok

#2. Cheryl Strayed reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship, and loss.

Mira Bartok

#3. What will life be like without her? I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears; gets tired of all this trouble at home? What if she leaves me too? How heavy is a dresser when you're the only one pushing it against the door? I feel truly on my own.

Mira Bartok

#4. We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

Mira Bartok

#5. Memory, if it is anything at all, is unreliable.

Mira Bartok

#6. Eloquent and moving ... an extraordinary testament to the enduring power of love - beyond faith and dogma. It reminds us of why we are here: to love and live fully, to be curious about all things, and to live a compassionate - and passionate - authentic life.

Mira Bartok

#7. Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do comprehend.

Mira Bartok

#8. Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur.

Mira Bartok

#9. I don't want to be the person who gasps in fear whenever she hears the sound of a doorbell or a phone. I just want to lose myself in these hills, in the river winding west to the city of bridges.

Mira Bartok

#10. Children of the mentally ill learn early on how not to be a bother, especially if they grew up with neglect. As my sister insisted once, when she was in severe pain after injuring her ankle, 'This isn't me! This is not who I am!

Mira Bartok

#11. He [Nicolaus Steno] told the audience, Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend.

Mira Bartok

#12. Candid and searing, Deborah Jiang Stein's memoir is a remarkable story about identity, lost and found, and about the author's journey to reclaim - and celebrate - that most primal of relationships, the one between mother and child. I dare you to read this book without crying.

Mira Bartok

#13. We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don't want you to think that anything is wrong.

Mira Bartok

#14. Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says we are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember. Who am I, then, if my memory is impaired?

Mira Bartok