Bessel van der Kolk Quotes
We soothe newborns, but parents soon start teaching their children to tolerate higher levels of arousal, a job that is often assigned to fathers. (I once heard the psychologist John Gottman say, “Mothers stroke, and fathers poke.”) Learning how to manage arousal is a key life skill, and parents must do it for babies before babies can do it for themselves. If that gnawing sensation in his belly makes a baby cry, the breast or bottle arrives. If he’s scared, someone holds and rocks him until he calms down. If his bowels erupt, someone comes to make him clean and dry. Associating intense sensations with safety, comfort, and mastery is the foundation of self-regulation, self-soothing, and self-nurture, a theme to which I return throughout this book.
Quotes to Explore
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When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
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I never was for telephones. Just don't like them, that's all. Anybody wants to talk to you, they can come to see you.
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Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.
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A sack is way better than any nightclub. A touchdown is way better than any bar experience I've ever had.
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What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.
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I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.
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I got drunk when I was five. Everybody gets drunk before they're 21.
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I want to give my followers a positive message. I want to give those girls a positive message who have been forcefully married, who continue to sacrifice. I want to be an example for those people. That's my aim.
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Rey is so strong. She's cool and smart and she can look after herself. Young girls can look at her and know that they can wear trousers if they want to. That they don't have to show off their bodies.
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My role models were always the Pacinos and the Oldmans, the guys who get dirty with their characters, and I arrived in L.A. during the big boom of 'Dawson's Creek.' I was getting cast as the boy next door, or the friend of the jock. I thought, 'Did I really have to do all that studying?'
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Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting.
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I've written a screenplay that is a series of monologues and songs; they form this sort of human tapestry across time and place. The form is strange, but I find it really fascinating.
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Good food is healthy food. Food is supposed to sustain you so you can live better, not so you can eat more. Some people eat to live, and some people live to eat.
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I personally don't even try to compare New York and L.A. To me, they are just way too different.
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I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.
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Blackbeard is probably the most infamous pirate who ever lived. He's one of those characters for which most of your work is done before you start.
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You don't get happy by sitting around going on, 'Oh this is a horrible situation, what to do?' You've got to find the courage to change that. I think change is extremely hard for people.
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The state-initiated referendum has always been a part of this anti-democratic logic. Stop the talk, we're going to decide, yes or no. At this point the citizen's role is to wave one flag or the other and cheer for one side of the simple question or the other. In other words, we're reduced to children.
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If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.
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Actors, you have to wait for people to give you work, or you have to make your own stuff. But standup, I could just say, 'I want to do standup in 30 minutes,' and I can go do standup. Or I could just say, 'I want to do standup in a few weeks in this city.'
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The truth of the Christian faith surpasses the capacity of reason.
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Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.
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We soothe newborns, but parents soon start teaching their children to tolerate higher levels of arousal, a job that is often assigned to fathers. (I once heard the psychologist John Gottman say, “Mothers stroke, and fathers poke.”) Learning how to manage arousal is a key life skill, and parents must do it for babies before babies can do it for themselves. If that gnawing sensation in his belly makes a baby cry, the breast or bottle arrives. If he’s scared, someone holds and rocks him until he calms down. If his bowels erupt, someone comes to make him clean and dry. Associating intense sensations with safety, comfort, and mastery is the foundation of self-regulation, self-soothing, and self-nurture, a theme to which I return throughout this book.
