Quotes by British Authors - Page 178

Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.
Russell Brand
... one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.
Agatha Christie
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook?Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is.
Doris Lessing
Each day is a new chance to improve your life, and that of your family, friends and colleagues. Be positive in your outlook, honest in your dealing and determined in your efforts. You will succeed
Arthur Crandon
In misery it is great comfort to have a companion.
John Lyly
If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.
John Bunyan
It’s about needing to feel loved and comforted but feeling unworthy of real love and comfort. It’s about hating having needs and desires. For some of us, needs make us feel greedy and selfish. For some of us, having needs means we can easily get hurt if those needs are not met. For some of us, we don’t believe we deserve to have our needs met. We try to convince ourselves that we don’t need anything by avoiding food, one of our greatest primal needs.
Emma McEvoy
Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to po or suffering humanity than anything else that has "cast up" in my time or is like to--this art by which even the "poor" can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favourably on the morality of the country?
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Life may be scaryBut it’s only temporary.And this is perhaps the most comforting conclusion to be reached if one discounts the possibility of meaning.
Quentin S. Crisp
Travel was a species of warfare.
E.M. Forster
Ridiculous, that Finn had to be the one giving comfort. But it had been this way with Tom too. Arguments were tricky things for both sides to win if no one ever gave way first. There was something terribly domestic about the small sacrifice of ego, of first place. Sure, sex was a fine thing, but a fight at the end of which the pair of you were more lovingly entangled than ever, that was closer to being one flesh, one soul, than anything else.
Alex Beecroft
It comforted her, in the confused unhappy welter of her emotions, to see the mountains always tranquil, remote, in their lonely splendour; untouchable, serenely inviolate. It was an obscure comfort to her to know that man's hectic world wasn't the only one — that there were others, where agitation and passion and bewilderment had no place. When her love turned into a chaotic fever-dream, in which she was tossing, hallucinated, frightened and miserable, she had longed to escape to the cold, austere, changeless beauty and peace of the snow.
Anna Kavan
If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that.
Patrick Ness
And, as for the oil, it is a masterpiece. You’ll see.”Before dinner that night, we tested it, dripping it onto slices of bread that had been rubbed with the flesh of tomatoes. It was like eating sunshine.
Peter Mayle
The way of painful duty is the way of fullest comfort. Christ carrieth all our comforts in his hand : if we are out of that way where Christ is to be met, we are out of the way where comfort is to be had (312).
Richard Baxter
She understood about the comfort you can get from a small separate world, whether it's a theatre or a basketball team or the inside of a book.
Susan Cooper
Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.
George Orwell
Shall I make you a cup of tea? He asked. It was the classic response to crisis practiced throughout these islands—in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. Emotional turmoil, danger, even disaster could be faced with far greater equanimity if the kettle was switched on. War has been declared! There’s been a major earthquake! The stock market has collapsed! Oh really? Let me put the kettle on….
Alexander McCall Smith
Terry Gilliam has spoken scathingly about my preference for physical comfort. I have come to the conclusion that this is very much his problem.
John Cleese
Anna and Emma just poofed.”“What?”“I was standing there. I was watching them. I was holding Anna’s hand when it happened.”Astrid rose and without really thinking about it wrapped her arms around Sam like she did when she was trying to comfort Little Pete.But unlike Little Pete, Sam responded to her touch by awkwardly hugging her back. For a moment his face was in her hair and she heard his ragged breathing close to her ear. And it seemed like they might do it again, the kissing thing, but then, both at once, they pushed away.“She was scared,” Sam said. “Anna, I mean. She saw Emma disappear. They were born just six minutes apart. So, first Emma. Then Anna, waiting for it. Knowing it was coming.
Michael Grant
The world won't get more or less terrible if we're indoors somewhere with a mug of hot chocolate.
Kamila Shamsie
He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted.
Neil Gaiman
Catherine had never wanted comfort more, and [Henry] looked as if he was aware of it.
Jane Austen
She was of traditional build herself, but her figure was largely concealed by the folds of a generously cut shift dress made out of a flecked green fabric. It was like a tent, thought Mma Ramotswe--a camouflage tent of the sort that the Botswana Defence Force might use. But I do not sit in judgement on the dresses of others, she told herself, and a tent was a practical enough garment, if that is what one felt comfortable in.
Alexander McCall Smith
It was her brother,' said Mr. Thornton to himself. 'I am glad.I may never see her again; but it is comfort-a relief-to know that much. I knew she could not be unmaidenly; and yet I yearned for conviction. Now I am glad!' It was a little golden thread running through the dark web of his present fortunes; which were growing ever gloomier and more gloomy.
Elizabeth Gaskell
When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.
Kenneth Grahame
Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.
Michael Morpurgo
When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: "One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.
Beatrix Potter
Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
Thomas de Quincey
During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn’t quite see or recognize. It wasn’t me. I was spaced out on the ceiling. I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn’t feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan. I’d add a large amount of salt — I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn’t look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else’s eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands would flip the omelette on to a plate and I’d spread the remainder of the butter on the toast when the two slices of bread leapt from the toaster. ‘Delicious,’ he’d say, commenting on the food before even trying it.
Alice Jamieson
She continued her own studies, principally attending to German, and to Literature; and every Sunday she went alone to the German and English chapels. Her walks too were solitary, and principally taken in the allée défendue, where she was secure from intrusion. This solitude was a perilous luxury to one of her temperament; so liable as she was to morbid and acute mental suffering.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Despite the growing clinical and research interest in dissociative symptoms and disorders, it is also true that the substantial prevalence rates for dissociative disorders are still disproportional to the number of studies addressing these conditions. For example, schizophrenia has a reported rate of 0.55% to 1% of the normal population (Goldner, Hus, Waraich, & Somers, more or less similar to the prevalence of DID. Yet a PubMed search generated 25,421 papers on research related to schizophrenia, whereas only 73 publications were found for DID-related research.
Paul H. Blaney
The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002).
Paul H. Blaney
Nothing. That's why it's funny. It's so bad I just think it's funny,' Renee says, tilting her head back so the chips don't fall out of her mouth.‘Do you really?’‘If I don’t laugh about it what else will I do?’She doesn’t actually laugh though. She falls back, throws chips into the air and tries to catch them in her mouth
Dawn O'Porter
If you aren’t paranoid before you arrive in this city, give it a few weeks and you will soon notice it creeping in, dripping into your subconscious like a leaky tap. The trick is not to give a flying fuck what anyone thinks about you, and if you are in the right frame of mind this can be an easy trick to perform but if not you’ll soon notice that for a city full of people who do a great Stevie Wonder impersonation when it comes to the homeless and beggars and casual violence towards others, wearing the wrong kind of shoes or a cheap suit brings out a sneering, hateful attitude that can have weaker minded individuals locked in their houses for weeks before harassing their doctors for prescriptions of Prozac and Beta blockers just to make it out the front door.
Garry Crystal
Didn’t you find it all … rather unsatisfying?”“Yes, but I couldn’t seem to see a way out. It was like being three different people, and they all wanted to go different ways.”A slight smile. “The result was I went nowhere.
Pat Barker
And that will be on my medical records for ever.Everyone will always know I’m a nutter. Behavioural problems. I’m just a bloody label…A label written on a white board in a single room without a radio, in a place where everyone else was at least 20 years older than me. Can’t think about it. It’s anger that goes nowhere.
Rae Earl
I’m so NUMB. I just don’t care, it seems-but I must do. This is all going to sound totally incoherent. I’m that bunged up, but totally empty. I think my worries about who I am have reached a head.I mean who is Rae Earl? I think I know myself, but then other people say things.
Rae Earl
I laughed it off but I close the bedroom door and I lose it and I stick it all down here and this is where it all stays. And this is where it has to stay because I am not ending up in the nutter ward again with brown walls, jigsaws, and people crying that their husbands left them, and men slamming their heads against walls, and Mum bringing me a mini trifle and a copy of Smash Hits like that would make everything better. It didn’t. It won’t. It can’t. Psychiatric wards when most of my mates were….I can’t tell anyone what is going on…Can’t write…Can’t think about it.Not even here.
Rae Earl
Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible. On the contrary, though I remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it.
Aldous Huxley
No one is too far away to be cared for, or to care.
Martin Baker
Be who you are. Do what you can. Embrace the journey.
Martin Baker
Mental health is one of the last great taboos.
Stephen Fry
To resist a compulsion with willpower alone is to hold back an avalanche by melting the snow with a candle. It just keeps coming and coming and coming.
David Adam
Officially, it is no more possible to be a little bit OCD than it is to be a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead.
David Adam
And for three weeks I was trapped in my own mind again. But this time, I had weapons. One of them, maybe the most important, was this knowledge: I have been ill before, then well again. Wellness is possible.
Matt Haig
- Please. Don't switch off my mind by attempting to straighten me. Listen and understand, and when you feel contempt don't express it, at least not verbally, at least not to me.(Silence.)- I don't feel contempt.- No?- No. It's not your fault.- It's not your fault. That's all I ever hear, it's not your fault, it's an illness, it's not your fault, I know it's not my fault. You've told me that so often I'm beginning to think it is my fault.- It's not your fault.- I KNOW.- But you allow it.
Sarah Kane
In this paper I propose the existence of two distinct presentations of DID, a Stable and an Active one. While people with Stable DID struggle with their traumatic past, with triggers that re-evoke that past and with the problems of daily functioning with severe dissociation, people with Active DID are, in addition, also engaged in a life of current, on-going involvement in abusive relationships, and do not respond to treatment in the same way as other DID patients. The paper observes these two proposed DID presentations in the context of other trauma-based disorders, through the lens of their attachment relationship. It proposes that the type, intensity and frequency of relational trauma shape—and can thus predict—the resulting mental disorder. - Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, Active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders
Adah Sachs
Misery, like yoga, is not a competitive sport
Matt Haig
Somewhere I read that anorexia recovery is more painful for the sufferer than actively engaging in the eating disordered behaviours
Nancy Tucker
Under the heading of "defense mechanisms,” psychoanalysis describes a number of ways in which a person becomes alienated from himself. For example, repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection. These "mechanisms" are often described in psychoanalytic terms as themselves "unconscious,” that is, the person himself appears to be unaware that he is doing this to himself. Even when a person develops sufficient insight to see that "splitting", for example, is going on, he usually experiences this splitting as indeed a mechanism, an impersonal process, so to speak, which has taken over and which he can observe but cannot control or stop. There is thus some phenomenological validity in referring to such "defenses" by the term "mechanism.” But we must not stop there. They have this mechanical quality because the person as he experiences himself is dissociated from them. He appears to himself and to others to suffer from them. They seem to be processes he undergoes, and as such he experiences himself as a patient, with a particular psychopathology. But this is so only from the perspective of his own alienated experience. As he becomes de-alienated he is able first of all to become aware of them, if he has not already done so, and then to take the second, even more crucial, step of progressively realizing that these are things he does or has done to himself. Process becomes converted back to praxis, the patient becomes an agent.
R.D. Laing
They (...) call what I have an invisible illness, but I often wonder if they're really looking. Beyond the science stuff. It doesn't bleed or swell, itch or crack, but I see it, right there on my face. It's like decay, this icky green colour, as if my life were being filmed through a grey filter. I lack light, am an entire surface area that the sun can't touch.
Louise Gornall
In the same way that the women's movement of the seventies and eighties brought rape and incest into public consciousness, we can do the same with the causes and reality of dissociation and multiplicity.
Carolyn Spring
You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person.There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more.
Jake Wood
Hating our bodies is something that we learn, and it sure as hell is something that we can unlearn.
Megan Jayne Crabbe
But my thoughts were more like poisons. I had so many, they made me sick.
Sarah Waters
Because now people use the phrase OCD to describe minor personality quirks. "Oooh, I like my pens in a line, I'm so OCD."NO YOU'RE FUCKING NOT."Oh my God, I was so nervous about that presentation, I literally had a panic attack."NO YOU FUCKING DIDN'T."I'm so hormonal today. I just feel totally bipolar."SHUT UP, YOU IGNORANT BUMFACE.
Holly Bourne
The assumption that being gay or black necessarily harms the self-worth of all who fit this category has a patronizing dimension, because it neglects consideration of the agency that persons exercise in respect of imposed identity.
Michael Kenny
But that is what these people do - the Steves of this world - they all try and make something out of nothing. and they all do it for themselves.
Nathan Filer