Top 40 Patty Duke Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Reality is hard. It is no walk in the park, this thing called life.”

— Patty Duke

2. “It’s toughest to forgive ourselves. So it’s probably best to start with other people. It’s almost like peeling an onion. Layer by layer, forgiving others, you really do get to the point where you can forgive yourself.”

— Patty Duke

3. “We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn’t, we’d go crazy.”

— Patty Duke

4. “My recovery from manic depression has been an evolution, not a sudden miracle.”

— Patty Duke

5. “From the moment we walk out the door until we come back home our sensibilities are so assaulted by the world that we have to soak up as much love as we can get, simply to arm ourselves.”

— Patty Duke

6. “I tell people to monitor their self-pity. Self-pity is very unattractive.”

— Patty Duke

7. “I knew from a very young age that there was something very wrong with me.”

— Patty Duke

8. “When I’m 80 and sitting in a rocking chair listening to the Rolling Stones, there is absolutely no way I’m going to feel old or forget my younger days.”

— Patty Duke

9. “No matter what your laundry list of requirements in choosing a mate, there has to be an element of good luck and good fortune and good timing.”

— Patty Duke

10. “Sometimes it is the simplest, seemingly most inane, most practical stuff that matters the most to someone.”

— Patty Duke

11. “Actors take risks all the time. We put ourselves on the line. It is creative to be able to interpret someone’s words and breathe life into them.”

— Patty Duke

12. “The panic attacks – I still have them. They started when I was around 8. They always have to do with my death.”

— Patty Duke

13. “I have two books that were published quite some time ago. I start to read about three sentences. I have to close it. I am so self-conscious. Who did I think I was?”

— Patty Duke

14. “The Eleanor Roosevelt Award that I received for women’s rights activities is one I treasure.”

— Patty Duke

15. “I’m going to be 58, and I’m a woman. In this business, that seems to be a bigger crime than being mentally ill.”

— Patty Duke

16. “Women who put on a few pounds after starting lithium sometimes say the cure is worse than the disease. The weight gain shoots them straight into depression.”

— Patty Duke

17. “I’m living out a childhood fantasy. Our house is in a historic district of a small town that I used to read about in storybooks.”

— Patty Duke

18. “I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast, but I can sing every single word of rock and roll.”

— Patty Duke

19. “The mania started with insomnia and not eating and being driven, driven to find an apartment, driven to see everybody, driven to do New York, driven to never shut up.”

— Patty Duke

20. “I had been very close to Anne Bancroft when we worked together in The Miracle Worker.”

— Patty Duke

21. “Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries.”

— Patty Duke

22. “I have been afraid all my life that I am going to die. All my life it has been stuffed in my imagination.”

— Patty Duke

23. “We call that Sean’s little independent movie.”

— Patty Duke

24. “I think my real depressions started when I was about 16 and doing The Patty Duke Show. I would go to bed at about 10 o’clock on a Friday night and not get up again until 6:30 Monday morning.”

— Patty Duke

25. “I’ve come to believe that whoever I am didn’t start on December 14, 1946, and isn’t going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.”

— Patty Duke

26. “I believe that all the important people in my life prior to 1982 were victimized by my illness.”

— Patty Duke

27. “If I have any message for others, it is to go for help early and not to be a resistant patient.”

— Patty Duke

28. “I know that without treatment I would not have never been able to harness my creativity in such a successful way.”

— Patty Duke

29. “You can have manic depression without having an ounce of creativity.”

— Patty Duke

30. “One of the things I’ve discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don’t give a damn if you walked five miles to school.”

— Patty Duke

31. “I joke around a lot about the manic times because they’re funny. We manics do outrageous things and it is part of our colorful nature.”

— Patty Duke

32. “I kind of like the position of being the fair-haired savior of my mother.”

— Patty Duke

33. “I never did quite fit the glamour mode. It is life with my husband and family that is my high now.”

— Patty Duke

34. “When I don’t know what the music is going to be for a scene, I imagine some sort of orchestration going on and damned if they don’t usually come up with a similar kind of thing.”

— Patty Duke

35. “I have a picture of myself in my mind as I walk around every day, until I look in the mirror-and then I’m stunned.”

— Patty Duke

36. “I was just sort of moving through time.”

— Patty Duke

37. “I can’t even remember how many times I tried to kill myself.”

— Patty Duke

38. “I still have highs and lows, just like any other person. What’s missing is the lack of control over the super highs, which became destructive, and the super lows, which are immediately destructive.”

— Patty Duke

39. “All I will tell you is that I play a small role in someone’s happily ever after.”

— Patty Duke

40. “I’m not sure I want all my neuroses cleared up.”

— Patty Duke

41. “The doctors must tell you that one of the risks of surgery is that you might die. This poor doctor was talking to an actress. It was very dramatic to me. To him, it was just a thing he had to say.”

— Patty Duke