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Life & Wisdom Quote by Laura Hillenbrand

"I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas"

About this Quote

Hillenbrand describes vertigo the way a great sportswriter calls a play: with clean, kinetic specificity that forces you to feel it in your own body. The sentence structure rocks like the sensation itself. Short declaratives ("I have vertigo.") give you a hard fact, then the prose starts to sway: pitching, spinning, high seas. She chooses verbs that imply betrayal by something you usually trust without thinking - the floor. The subtext is quietly brutal: this isn't just dizziness, it's a loss of treaty with reality, where the most basic agreement (down is down) gets revoked.

The ship-deck comparison does extra work culturally. It's a familiar disaster-movie image, but it also smuggles in isolation and endurance. On a ship, you can't step off the problem; you ride it out. That frames vertigo not as a quirky symptom but as a chronic environment, a place you live. There's also an implied mismatch between appearance and experience: from the outside, a person with vertigo can look fine, even composed, while internally they're in a storm.

Context matters because Hillenbrand is known for narrative control and propulsion, yet her public life has included severe chronic illness and limited mobility. This passage reads like a writer translating private chaos into public language, insisting on accuracy without melodrama. The intent isn't pity; it's legibility. She's giving readers a sensory bridge so they stop imagining "lightheaded" and start understanding "unsafe."

Quote Details

TopicHealth
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Hillenbrand, Laura. (2026, January 16). I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-vertigo-vertigo-makes-it-feel-like-the-99021/

Chicago Style
Hillenbrand, Laura. "I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-vertigo-vertigo-makes-it-feel-like-the-99021/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-have-vertigo-vertigo-makes-it-feel-like-the-99021/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

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Laura Hillenbrand Quote: Vertigo as Ship at Sea
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About the Author

Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand (born May 15, 1967) is a Author from USA.

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