There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.

I do not believe that I have had an interview with anybody in twenty-five years in which the person to whom I was talking was not annoyed during the early part of the interview by my asking stupid questions.

The psychiatric interviewer is supposed to be doing three things: considering what the patient could mean by what he says; considering how he himself can best phrase what he wishes to communicate to the patient; and, at the same time, observing the general pattern of the events being communicated. In addition to that, to make notes which will be of more than evocative value, or come anywhere near being a verbatim record of what is said, in my opinion is beyond the capacity of most human beings.

There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.

If you have to maintain self-esteem by pulling down the standing of others, you are extraordinarily unfortunate.