Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Trauma is not the sole province of victims. If that were true, soldiers returning from Afghanistan wouldn't suffer from PTSD.

I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane.

I have friends who have had PTSD, and you can get it from other things than war.

No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war's dislocation.

I have daddy issues. So I keep tissues on me at all times.

Posttraumatic stress is something that's always existed. I think that the earliest recording was during the Trojan War, but it's only recently that we're beginning to be aware of it.

If you are a real soldier, you never get over the war.

My grandparents were deeply affected by war, and it was obvious that the men who fought were horribly affected, as were the women who remained at home.

As wounded men may limp through life, so our war minds may not regain the balance of their thoughts for decades.

Hold it, Doc, a world war passed through my brain. He said, Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane.

I know people with PTSD, and it's very real and very hard. But it doesn't change your core character.

I tried to commit suicide because I sacrificed everything for Hitler. And that man whom we sacrificed everything for left us all alone. If he had committed suicide four years before, it would have been all right.

According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scars than almost anything else.

When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over and you're strong and you can handle it. But a lot of people can't handle it. And they see horror stories. They see events that you couldn't see in a movie, nobody would believe it.

There are things that can harm a lot more than physically.

The portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder and things like that felt really big and important.

Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.

A schizophrenic war is not an easy thing to deal with.

Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

The real Rose Hovick was seriously mentally disturbed; June Havoc called her a beautiful little ornament that was damaged.

War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread.

Don't tell me that [broken heartstrings] hurt less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there's no way for it to metastasize - it does.

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

I am not aware, however, that patients suffering from traumatic neurosis are much occupied in their waking lives with memories of their accident. Perhaps they are more concerned with not thinking of it.

Another of the hard things about being in a war, grandchildren, is that although there are times of quiet when the fighting has stopped, you know you will soon be fighting again. Those quiet times give you the chance to think about what has happened. Some of it you would rather not think about, as you remember the pain and the sorrow. You also have time to worry about what will happen when you go into battle again.