Mark Vonnegut > Quotes

“Knowing that you're crazy doesn't make the crazy things stop happening.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have. What occurs to people when they read Kurt is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“With mental illness the trick is to not take your feelings so seriously; you’re zooming in and zooming away from things that go from being too important to being not important at all.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“People with mental illness are very much like people without mental illness only more so. What we lose with a psychotic episode is the comforting assurance that we can’t lose our mind. When most people look down they see solid ground. When I look down, I’m not so sure.

Crazy thoughts are not the problem. Everyone has crazy thoughts. Hallucinations and delusions tend to catch the attention but aren’t the problem. The problem is that the world becomes discontinuous. We can’t attend to the world and take care of ourselves. So others try to take care of us and they do an imperfect job of it. There is no substitute for being well.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Having their feelings make sense is how people get their kicks.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on the back, team building, and making fun of introverts to get much done. Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow responsible.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?”
― Mark Vonnegut

“None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“The biggest gift of being unambiguously mentally ill is the time I've saved myself trying to be normal.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“I saw a study the other day showing that some atypical anti-psychotic was at least as good as mood stabilizers in preventing suicide. It’s a very good thing to decrease suicide but we should care at least a little if I’m not killing myself because I feel better or if I just can’t remember where I put the damn gun.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Most adults have forgotten what they had to do to survive childhood.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“If nothing I say sparks any thoughts or identification, it’s possible you’re taking too much medication. If it’s the greatest talk you’ve ever heard, you’re not taking enough.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“I often took him as one of God's little jokes on me. When I was in desperate trouble, what saved me from a fate worse than death? To what do I owe my life? Was it love, affection, understanding, friends, wisdom? No no no. It was a man who looks like a poor copy of Walt Disney, drives pink Cadillacs, wears baby-blue alligator shoes, and appears to have the emotional depth of a slightly retarded potato.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“Are people who have been crazy held to unfair standards?

Of course, but it’s not in your best interest to complain. If you’re paranoid and people are looking at you funny it’s best to let it pass. Psychotic people have an uncanny knack for making their own worst dreams come true. Depressing things happen to depressed people way beyond what you would expect from random distribution.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Beyond a certain point, gathering further evidence of the hurtfulness and shortcomings of one’s family, employer, et cetera is like eating the same poisonous mushroom over and over and expecting that sooner or later it will be nutritious.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

“I understand perfectly why some of my autistic patients scream and flap their arms--it's to frighten off extroverts”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“Writing is very hard mostly because until you try to write something down, it’s easy to fool yourself into believing you understand things. Writing is terrible for vanity and self-delusion.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

“After my first few tastes I was pretty much hooked. I'd have dry spells, months without any or only piddling amounts of grace, but I never forgot about it or stopped wanting it.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“Today it’s nice to be able to entertain odd thoughts without having to marry them all. Thank God. I can think whatever the hell I want. Entertaining odd thoughts won’t make you crazy. Refusing to entertain odd thoughts won’t make you well.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife's barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, "It was enough to have been a unicorn." What he meant was that he got to do art. It was magic to him that his hands and mind got to make wonderful things, that he didn't have to be just another goat or horse.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow actually responsible.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“The first meeting I really remember with the good doctor was when I was starting to be able to speak English again and making a brave attempt to regain some of my dignity. Trying to be very sane, I went up to him and asked if he was my doctor. He said he didn't think so.

"You're Dr. Dale, aren't you?"

"Why, Mark, of course. I didn't recognize you with clothes on." He had a talent for saying just the right thing.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

“Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in and of themselves do not make a life. If you lean on them too hard, you'll find that there's not much there. But if you add up a lot of things that aren't in and of themselves enough, it almost starts to add up to something....”
― Mark Vonnegut

“When I talk to the National Alliance on
Mental Illness (NAMI) and other patient
support groups, I take questions at the
end. At one talk I was asked, “What’s
the difference between yourself and
someone without mental illness?”

At another talk I was asked, “How do
you make the voices be not so mean?”

I wish I knew.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So