Andrew Solomon Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• A large proportion of my best friends are a little bit crazy. ... I try to be cautious with my friends who are too sane. Depression is itself destructive, and it breeds destructive impulses: I am easily disappointed in people who don't get it.

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Crazy, People

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

  20 Copy quote

• At the end of the day, will God be interested primarily in whether I have been kind and helped others, or in whether I was baptized and how?

  Andrew Solomon

  The End Of The Day, Kind, Ends

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

  17 Copy quote

• I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys, because I did not expect those joys to be ordinary to me.

  Andrew Solomon

  Joy, Ordinary, Ecstasy

  "How Do Our Worst Moments Shape Us?". "TED Radio Hour", andrewsolomon.com. August 1, 2014.

  17 Copy quote

• If really good people who are deeply committed and who are thriving spiritually have to beat down the nature with which they seem to have been born and cut themselves off from the full realization of love, how can that be pleasing to God?

  Andrew Solomon

  Cutting, People, Realization

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

  4 Copy quote

• I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul.

  Andrew Solomon

  Soul, Being Depressed, Mental Health

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance while you dance with a goat -- it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner with a better sense of balance.

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Balance, Trying

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.125, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• If some glorious angel suddenly descended through my living room ceiling and offered to take away the children I have and give me other, better children — more polite, funnier, nicer, smarter — I would cling to the children I have and pray away that atrocious spectacle.

  Andrew Solomon

  Children, Angel, Giving

  13 Copy quote

• Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.

  Andrew Solomon

  Sad, Depression, Despair

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

• Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Real, Drawing

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Our needs are our greatest asset. It turns out I've learned to give all the things that I need.

  Andrew Solomon

  Giving, Needs, I've Learned

  7 Copy quote

• Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children's faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination.

  Andrew Solomon

  Children, Exercise, Imagination

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• One of the things that frequently gets lost in descriptions of depression is that the depressed person often knows that it is a ludicrous condition to feel so disabled by the ordinary business of quotidian life.

  Andrew Solomon

  Depressed Person, Ordinary, Lost

  8 Copy quote

• It's deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth.

  Andrew Solomon

  Realizing, Humbling

  6 Copy quote

• Being gay is immutable. Maybe someday we'll figure out more of the science and it will be changeable, but we have no leads so far.

  Andrew Solomon

  Gay, Someday, Figures

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

  10 Copy quote

• Depression is the flaw in love. There's no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss. And that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy.

  Andrew Solomon

  Loss, Despair, Anticipation

  6 Copy quote

• What has become clear to me is that it is not the inherent nature of being gay that causes such a reduced life; it is, rather, the social circumstances around being gay: the perceptions of it and the cultural norms that it is said to violate. As some of those norms have changed, I have been able to be gay, to have a marriage, to have a family, and to have - if there is wood to knock on - a fortunate and happy life.

  Andrew Solomon

  Gay, Happy Life, Perception

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

  13 Copy quote

• The world changed, and the idea of having a family became feasible for homosexuals. But I was still left with the question as to what it would be like for a child to grow up with gay parents.

  Andrew Solomon

  Children, Growing Up, Gay

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• There is a false moral imperative that seems to be all-around us that treatment of depression, the medications and so on, are an artifice, and that it's not natural. And I think that's very misguided. It would be natural for people's teeth to fall out, but there is nobody militating against toothpaste, at least not in my circles.

  Andrew Solomon

  Fall, Thinking, Circles

  9 Copy quote

• Fixing is the illness model; acceptance is the identity model; which way any family goes reflects their assumptions and resources.

  Andrew Solomon

  Acceptance, Identity, Way

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences. We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it's purposeful. Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle. We could have been ourselves without our delights, but not without the misfortunes that drive our search for meaning. 'Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities,' St. Paul wrote in Second Corinthians, 'for when I am weak, then I am strong.'

  Andrew Solomon

  Motivational, Strong, Pain

  8 Copy quote

• If your love didn't always contain the possibility of loss, it would be very different from human love as we know it.

  Andrew Solomon

  Loss, Different, Would Be

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

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• I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong.

  Andrew Solomon

  Study, Much Love

  "Can Your Child's Identity Shape Yours?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. October 11, 2013.

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• One has to weigh all of one's values always in relative terms. On the upside, you get people who are not acting on their homosexual attraction, who are avoiding the sin of practicing homosexuality. On the downside, you have destroyed marriages, traumatized children, and dead people who have taken their own lives.

  Andrew Solomon

  Children, Taken, People

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

  4 Copy quote

• Sometimes, people end up thankful for what they mourned. You cannot achieve this state by seeking tragedy, but you can keep yourself open more to sorrow's richness than to unmediated despair. Tragedies with happy endings may be sentimental tripe, or they may be the true meaning of love.

  Andrew Solomon

  Grief, People, Suffering

  Andrew Solomon (2013). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.701, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle.

  Andrew Solomon

  Struggle, Ease, Impression

  "How Do Our Worst Moments Shape Us?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. August 01, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

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