Joanne Greenberg Quotes

• The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end...in the end it is our only ally.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Secret, Allies, Mental Health

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.12, Macmillan

  51 Copy quote

• There is nothing that you can do to me that my own craziness doesn't do to me smarter and faster and better.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Craziness, Faster, My Own

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.125, Macmillan

  39 Copy quote

• The people on the edge of Hell were most afraid of the devil; for those already in hell the devil was only another and no one in particular.

  Joanne Greenberg

  People, Devil, Hell

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.70, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• She now knew that the death she feared might not be a physical one, that it could be death of the will, the soul, the mind, the laws, and thus not death, but a perpetual dying.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Law, Soul, Mind

  Joanne Greenberg (2004). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, New Amer Library

  4 Copy quote

• Anybody can hear - it takes brains to listen.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Brain, Listening

  Joanne Greenberg (1985). “Rites of Passage”, Henry Holt & Company

  6 Copy quote

• Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Hate, Compassion, Joy

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.179, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• The creative strength is good enough and deep enough to bring itself to flower and to grow in spite of this sickness.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Flower, Creative, Sickness

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.70, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• suicide is a crime - the only crime that, if successful, guarantees that the perpetrator will not be punished for it. This makes it the most serious crime of all.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Suicide, Successful, Guarantees That

  5 Copy quote

• And if I fight, then for what?""For nothing easy or sweet, and I told you that last year and the year before that. For your own challenge, for your own mistakes and the punishment for them, for your own definition of love and of sanity - a good strong self with which to begin to live.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Sweet, Strong, Mistake

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.198, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• I once had a patient who used to practice the most horrible tortures on himself, and when I asked him why he did such things, he said, 'Why before the world does them.' I asked him then, 'Why not wait and see what the world will do?' and he said, 'Don't you see? It always come at last, but this way at least I am master of my own destruction.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Practice, Waiting, Doe

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.37, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• ...to experience the reality was to suffer a boredom as endless as the illness itself...the boredom of insanity was a great desert, so great that anyone's violence or agony seemed an oasis, and the brief companionship seemed like a rain in the desert that was numbered and counted and remembered long after it was gone.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Rain, Reality, Oasis

  4 Copy quote

• "I'm sorry I'm young," Deborah answered with a bitterness that was half prose. "We have a right to be as crazy as anyone else"

  Joanne Greenberg

  Sorry, Crazy, Half

  6 Copy quote

• Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions.

  Joanne Greenberg

  World, Inmates, Sometimes

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.10, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• The woman was sane; she accepted the heavy penalties of reality and enjoyed its gifts also.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Reality, Accepted, Penalties

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• all children blackmail their parents with their innocence.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Children, Parent, Innocence

  24 Copy quote

• The rose-garden world of perfection is a lie and a bore too!

  Joanne Greenberg

  Lying, Garden, Perfection

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.108, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• If I want to die, what am I saving myself for?

  Joanne Greenberg

  Suicidal, Saving, Want

  Joanne Greenberg (2004). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, New Amer Library

  6 Copy quote

• Don't cut bangs with a hatchet. Don't do brain surgery with a pickax.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Cutting, Brain, Bangs

  4 Copy quote

• Worrying is one of my few forms of prayer.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Prayer, Worry, Form

  4 Copy quote

• To praise one thing is not to damn another.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Praise, Damn, One Thing

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.133, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• suicide is the ultimate 'one-up,' as it were, the accusation that brooks no defense, the argument won at last.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Suicide, Defense, Lasts

  4 Copy quote

• The horror of the Pit lay in the emergence from it, with the return of her will, her caring, and her feeling of the need for meaning before the return of the meaning itself".

  Joanne Greenberg

  Caring, Feelings, Needs

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.25, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• I'm sorry I'm young," Deborah answered with a bitterness that was half prose. "We have a right to be as crazy as anyone else." The second part was more a plea, and to her surprise the superbly inhuman fighter smiled softly and said, "Yes ... I suppose that's true, though I never thought of it in those terms before.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Sorry, Crazy, Half

  4 Copy quote

• At least being nuts is being somewhere.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Nuts

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.61, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• A nut is someone whose noose broke.

  Joanne Greenberg

  Nuts, Broke, Nooses

  Joanne Greenberg (2009). “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Novel”, p.86, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

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