Migraine Quotes

“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off.

Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity.
When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes?
That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing.

(describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“I didn't feel physically sick. But mentally. My mind was twisting in so many ways. (...) We once saw a documentary on migraines. One of the men interviewed used to fall on his knees and bang his head against the floor, over and over during attacks. This diverted the pain from deep inside his brain, where he couldn't reach it, to a pain outside that he had control over.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there.”
― Ian Fleming, Moonraker

“And then a throb hits you on the left ide of the head so hard that your head bobs to the right...There's no way that came from inside your head, you think. That's no metaphysical crisis. God just punched you in the face.”
― Andrew Levy, A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary

“Depression affects almost 80% of migraine sufferers at one time or another. People with migraine, especially chronic migraine, also are more likely to experience intense anxiety and to have suicidal tendencies. If we want to live happy and joyful lives with migraine, it is vital that we acknowledge and deal with the emotional realities of the disease.”
― Sarah Hackley, Finding Happiness with Migraines: a Do It Yourself Guide, a min-e-bookTM

“A migraine is the cockblock of writing.”
― Don Roff

“Remember this: You are the expert of your body.”
― Sarah Hackley, Finding Happiness with Migraines: a Do It Yourself Guide, a min-e-bookTM

“No one knows our bodies or our subjective experiences like we do. This means we can rest secure in our knowledge of ourselves and what we’re going through, even when the medical profession doesn’t understand or believe us. Migraine is a weird and changing disease. It affects all of us differently, and every attack is a little different than the one before. This means that no one can understand your life, symptoms, or illness like you can. This can be incredibly empowering: you are the expert. But, it also carries great responsibility: to live as happily and as fully as possible, you must listen to your body and trust your instincts.”
― Sarah Hackley, Finding Happiness with Migraines: a Do It Yourself Guide, a min-e-bookTM

“By taking the time to focus on our mental and emotional well-being, we can minimize our triggers and reduce the likelihood of a recurrence.”
― Sarah Hackley, Finding Happiness with Migraines: a Do It Yourself Guide, a min-e-bookTM

“Every single ounce of pain focused on the left part of the head. Feels like whole body except left part of head is in fucking numb state.”
― Shrestha Sapan

“Everything is infected with brightness, throbbing with it, and she prays for dark the way a wanderer lost in the desert prays for water. The world is every bit as barren of darkness as a desert is of water. There is no dark in the shuttered room, no dark behind her eyelids. There are only greater and lesser degrees of radiance. When she's crossed over to this realm of relentless brilliance, the voices start.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“When Quoyle leaned forward the twin spears of the headache threatened to dislodge his eyes.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“Presiding over the entire attack there will be, in du Bois Reymond's words, "a general feeling of disorder," which may be experienced in either physical or emotional terms, and tax or elude the patient's powers of description.”
― Oliver Sacks, Migraine

“For the past ten days, I've had a migraine that follows me like a shadow. One hundred and forty-two hours of incessant pain, an eight on the ten-point scale. My doctor has suggested codeine, which I refused, because once I took too much Percocet after a tooth extraction and threw up for twenty-four hours straight. I have a CT scan, an MRI, I go to the neurologist—the readings are all inconclusive. I'm told it's a migraine with an unknown cause. Have you tried yoga? they say.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans

“Paint what you know, especially if it looks like something you shouldn't know.”
― Andrew Levy, A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary

“No matter what stage of illness we are in, whether we’ve just been diagnosed or we have lived with chronic migraines for decades, there are adjustments we can make to increase joy in our lives and to live more fully.”
― Sarah Hackley, Finding Happiness with Migraines: a Do It Yourself Guide, a min-e-bookTM

“When we make decisions that honor our dreams and priorities, we also make choices about what we won’t prioritize. We must embrace these choices as well.”
― Sarah Hackley, Finding Happiness with Migraines: a Do It Yourself Guide, a min-e-bookTM

“The margins of the space were bright without illuminating anything or casting shadows, sharp and terrible. It reminded her of the way schizophrenics and people suffering migraines would describe light as assaulting and dangerous.”
― James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn

“Stop mansplaining menstrution, we’ve got this.”
― Silvia Young, My FemTruth: Scandalous Survival Stories

“The sound of her laughter eased Clark’s migraine.”
― Bruce Crown, Chronic Passions

“Do I in any way profit from this misery?” Nietzsche finally responded. “I have reflected on that very question for many years. Perhaps I do profit. In two ways. You suggest that the attacks are caused by stress, but sometimes the opposite is true—that the attacks dissipate stress. My work is stressful. It requires me to face the dark side of existence, and the migraine attack, awful as it is, may be a cleansing convulsion that permits me to continue.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“The machos have migraine: "Not tonight, darling, I love me". (Les machos ont la migraine: - "Pas ce soir, chéri, je m' aime".)”
― Charles de Leusse

“Only the Right Brained may forgive,
because the Left Brain can't forget.
Amphibrains could have migraines.
//Just Hypothesizing”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“A migraine coming on. She got them when she was stressed.”
― Kara Thomas, The Cheerleaders

“There was hallucinogenic music on in the background that sounded like a migraine and a woman being tortured by tickling”
― David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

“Some people say that migraines feel like bad hangovers. And some people say that migraines feel like headaches that pulse. And some people say that migraines feel like stomach flu in your head. But what migraines really feel like is being tied to a railroad track while the worlds longest, loudest, freight train thunders over you. It starts with a bright light in the corner of your vision. Very bright. Like someone is standing beside you and shining a flashlight in your eye, but you can't back a light away. Can't turn your head from it. Then you hear the train's shrill whistle, the dull angry clank of the bell, the roar of its engine. By then you're tied to the train track. Hopefully the track is your bed and not a bus stop bench or restaurant table. And you can only try to flatten yourself as the train rushes toward you. Its light flashing and horn blaring. Finally you feel the hot breath of its arrival. Feel the smoky burning exhaust fill your lungs. And then it's thundering over you. Of course the train, the noise, and the light, and the fumes is all in your head. But that's the problem. It's ALL IN YOUR HEAD! You can't escape it. You can only lie on the track, waiting for the roaring, shrieking, light splintering pain to pass. And remember, this is the world's longest train. You'll be here for hours. in this exact position. In this much pain. Lifting your head, even if you were capable of that, which you're not, results in instant decapitation. But decapitation would at least stop the pain and sometimes you wish for it.”
― Katherine Heiny, Games and Rituals

“The migraine held me in its gloomy embrace. I rocked in my bed. I willed the railroad spike to remove itself from my head. I counted sheep. I counted breaths. I counted back from 100. I counted on myself. The pain in my head burned lethal umber and gold, shaped like a dagger and sharp as betrayal. I named it Detective Wasserman. I gave it flesh with my worrying, and I flayed it, inch by glorious inch.”
― Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

“A migraine walked into the bedroom and said to the body aches, " So, we are linking up with anxiety tonight or nah?”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“Either my head just got heavier or what's supposed to be holding it up is broken.”
― Niedria Dionne Kenny