408 Quotes by Andrew Solomon
"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery."
"[P]laces that seem lovely at first glance may actually be sinister, but places that feel sinister seldom turn out to be lovely."
"Those who believe their suffering has been valuable love more readily than those who see no meaning in their pain. Suffering does not necessarily imply love, but love implies suffering"
"It is not suffering that is precious, but the concentric pearlescence with which we contain it. The raw grit of anguish will never be in short supply. There is enough of it in the happiest life to serve these instructive purposes, and there always will be. We are more sympathetic to Holocaust survivors than to malcontent children of privilege, but we all have our darkness, and the trick is making something exalted of it."
"Life is most transfixing when you are awake to diversity, not only of ethnicity, ability, gender, belief, and sexuality but also of age and experience. The worst mistake anyone can make is to perceive anyone else as lesser."
"It's a strange poverty of the English language, and indeed, of many other languages, that we use this same word, "depression" to describe how a kid feels when it rains on his birthday, and to describe how somebody feels the minute before they commit suicide."
"Despite every advancement, language remains the defining nexus of our humanity; it is where our knowledge and hope lie. It is the precondition of human tenderness, mightier than the sword but also infinitely more subtle and ultimately more urgent."
"We do not seek painful experiences that adhere to our identities but rather we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences"
"Faith is a disability insofar as it constrains you from self-interest; atheism is a disability inasmuch as it shields you from hope. One might see power as a disability, too, for the isolation in which it imprisons those who wield it."