Suicidal Ideation Quotes

“I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I used to think it utterly normal that I suffered from “suicidal ideation” on an almost daily basis. In other words, for as long as I can remember, the thought of ending my life came to me frequently and obsessively.”
― Stephen Fry

“I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.”
― Nicole Lyons, Hush

“I was tired of being me.”
― Rachel Ward, Numbers

“There are people who fantasize about suicide, and paradoxically, these fantasies can be soothing because they usually involve either fantasizing about others' reactions to one's suicide or imagining how death would be a relief from life's travails. In both cases, an aspect of the fantasy is to exert control, either over others' views or toward life's difficulties. The writer A. Alvarez stated, " There people ... for whom the mere idea of suicide is enough; they can continue to function efficiently and even happily provided they know they have their own, specially chosen means of escape always ready..." In her riveting 2008 memoir of bipolar disorder, Manic, Terri Cheney opened the book by stating, "People... don't understand that when you're seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there's an out--even if it's bloody, even if it's permanent--makes the pain bearable for one more day."

This strategy appears to be effective for some people, but only for a while. Over longer periods, fantasizing about death leaves people more depressed and thus at higher risk for suicide, as Eddie Selby, Mike Amestis, and I recently showed in a study on violent daydreaming. A strategy geared toward increased feelings of self-control (fantasizing about the effects of one's suicide) "works" momentarily, but ultimately backfires by undermining feelings of genuine self-control in the long run.”
― Thomas Joiner, Myths About Suicide

“I will kill myself soon. But until then how do l tame my pain?”
― Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave

“He may attempt suicide, often not with the intent to die but to feel something, to confirm he is alive.”
― Jerold J. Kreisman, I Hate You—Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality

“Suicide rates have not slumped under the onslaught of antidepressants, mood-stabilizers, anxiolytic and anti-psychotic drugs; the jump in suicide rates suggests that the opposite is true. In some cases, suicide risk skyrockets once treatment begins (the patient may feel not only penalized for a justifiable reaction, but permanently stigmatized as malfunctioning). Studies show that self-loathing sharply decreases only in the course of cognitive-behavioral treatment.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

“I spent most of my life believing l
was crazy because all the crazy things I experienced in childhood were treated as nonexistent or normal. This belief colored every decision made, from something so basic as what to wear today, to the more esoteric boundaries of whether I should kill myself. I understood very well that killing myself under the wrong circumstances would establish my insanity forever. So I analyzed every word, every gesture, before committing myself. (Which probably accounts for why I am alive today.)”
― Sarah E. Olson, Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I know from my own experience that suicide is not what it seems. Too easy to try to piece together the fragmented life. The spirit torn in bits so that the body follows.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

“Fuck them all. I ought to have that tattooed on my forehead, for all the times I've thought it. Usually I am in transit, speeding in my Jeep until my lungs give out. Today, I'm driving ninety-five down 95. I weave in and out of traffic, sewing up a scar. People yell at me behind their closed windows. I give them the finger.

It would solve a thousand problems if I rolled the Jeep over an embankment. It's not like I haven't thought about it, you know. On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive--the sum of the parts equals more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“Fee-fi-fo-fum, now I'm borrowed, now I'm numb.”
― Anne Sexton, Selected Poems

“My foot slipped. A split second. And for that split second, I was falling.

In that split second, I didn't panic.

I thought, 'oh'.

Then Rachel's hand wrapped around my arm and steadied me.

'Thanks,' I stared at the edge . . .

Two seconds ago all I could think was, 'oh, thank god, now it's over.”
― B.C. Hedlund, Consigned to Oblivion

“That the very delusion which drove me to a death-loving desperation should so suddenly vanish would seem to indicate that many a suicide might be averted if the person contemplating it could find the proper assistance when such a crisis impends.”
― Clifford Whittingham Beers, A Mind That Found Itself: A Memoir of Madness and Recovery

“Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“Both the suicidal and non-suicidal are often angry with others. One way to discharge this anger is to fantasize about violent revenge. The insults of daily life often cause fantasies of revenge to flare up and quickly subside. The people with these fantasies usually do not act on them; they are not motives or goals. They are involuntary responses to perceived insult—ways of coping with rage. The suicidal, whether or not they attempt, suffer tremendous and persistent pain and anger. That this pain should find its way into their fantasies and dreams is no surprise. This ideation is not a motive for action; it is an alternative to action. Fantasizing about suicide is an effort to delay or avoid suicide, not the activity of formulating a motive, goal, or intention. Fantasies doubtlessly succeed in preventing many attempts.”
― David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain

“I wonder ... if people think of suicidal ideation as thoughts that are obviously sinister. If they assume the voice comes in a snake hiss or a demon's warped bass. Does it occur to them that it could sound like the friend who nudges you at a bad, crowded party and whispers, conspiratorially, "Hey, lets get out of here". Do [they] consider how well you have to know yourself to see that moment for what it is and whisper back, "You are not my real friend".”
― Emery Lord, [Don't] Call Me Crazy

“As they approach true mastery of the Art of Starving, students will see that eating disorders are merely one part of a broad spectrum of self-harm. Cutting, addiction, suicidal ideation. These are all ways to assert your power. To prove that you're not weak. To show you're strong enough to control your own destiny by destroying yourself.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“THE DAY HAD GONE BY JUST AS DAYS GO BY. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life. I had worked for an hour or two and perused the pages of old books. I had had pains for two hours, as elderly people do. I had taken a powder and been very glad when the pains consented to disappear. I had lain in a hot bath and absorbed its kindly warmth. Three times the mail had come with undesired letters and circulars to look through. I had done my breathing exercises, but found it convenient today to omit the thought exercises. I had been for an hour's walk and seen the loveliest feathery cloud patterns penciled against the sky. That was very delightful. So was the reading of the old books. So was the lying in the warm bath. But, taken all in all, it had not been exactly a day of rapture. No, it had not even been a day brightened with happiness and joy. Rather, it had been just one of those days which for a long while now had fallen to my lot; the moderately pleasant, the wholly bearable and tolerable, lukewarm days of a discontented middle-aged man; days without special pains, without special cares, without particular worry, without despair; days when I calmly wonder, objective and fearless, whether it isn't time to follow the example of Adalbert Stifter and have an accident while shaving.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Adults viewed suicidal ideation as a pathology. But for me it was logic. Weighing the bad against the good, projecting forward to decide if life was worth sticking around for.”
― Emi Nietfeld, Acceptance: A Memoir

“To be perfectly blunt about it, my choice sometimes is: I can kill myself or I can make a dozen cupcakes. Right so, I'll do the cupcakes and I can kill myself tomorrow.”
― Marian Keyes, Saved by Cake

“When I was a little boy my daddy told me to sell pots and pans. He said it's good stuff. Makes you LIVE LONGER. By the time I was 22 I really didn't want to live very long at all....”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“when a friend tells me
he has to fight the urge
to flip his electric razor's "on" switch
and toss it in his bathwater,

I pat his shoulder and say,
Yeah. . . yeah, I know what you mean . . .
when I want to say, Please! Don't tell me this.
I'm as helpless as you.”
― Anne Ohman Youngs

“I embrace my demise, harboring both disdain and adoration for existence. I yearn to endure torment and fade into oblivion, a state of perfection that I find appealing.”
― Jonathan Harnisch

“Taking your life closes one chapter, but leaves countless stories unfinished.”
― Carlos Wallace, Why Sell Lies When The Truth Is Free

“I want my corpse to be white like these sheets, whiter than these blankets. I want to be drained of my blood and my humanity forever. I never want to feel again.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation