Andrew Solomon Quotes
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The way that Russian Orthodox services work generally, and certainly the way that this worked, is that it goes on for hours and hours, and people wander in and wander out, and people talk the whole way through. One of the American women said to the other, "This is so beautiful. I can actually imagine maybe even becoming Orthodox." She went on and on, and finally a Russian seated just in front of her turned and said, "You are not member of church because it is beautiful; you are member of church because it is the single truth of God!"
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Life is enriched by difficulty; love is made more acute when it requires exertion.
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Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger.
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Though many schizophrenics become curiously attached to their delusions, the fading of the nondelusional world puts them in loneliness beyond all reckoning, a fixed residence on a noxious private planet they can never leave, and where they can receive no visitors.
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I just look at my own life, which is full of error as all life is. I have done plenty of things that I am not proud of.
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I was overpowered by being in the world, by other people and their lives I couldn’t lead, their jobs I couldn’t do - overpowered even by jobs I would never want or need to do.
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The campaign against polygamy, around which a lot of anti-Mormon sentiment was organized, seems horrific to me.
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There is also somehow the idea that this gay thing is all just about indulgence in carnal pleasure. When I was twenty and felt that nobody could know I was gay, I was having sex with strangers in public parks. I don't think it was evil exactly, but it wasn't so great either. There was nobody particularly benefiting from it, except, I suppose, to the extent that it gave some pleasure to me and perhaps whomever I was with.
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All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves.
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Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds.
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I like the relative literacy of at least some of England. I mean, I didn't come for the food or the weather!
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I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.
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There is a tendency to dehumanize kids that commit crimes. The system is focused on punishment, not on rehabilitation. These kids are the most misunderstood and most cruelly treated.
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There is neither a cure for nor a way to repair autism. There is no implant like there is for the deaf.
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In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own.
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When I remember how unhappy I was in adolescence - about the fact that, though I wasn't really using the term to or for myself, I knew that I was gay - I think, "Oh, if someone then could have shown me just an hour in the life that I have now, I would have made it through all of that misery and despair just fine." The pain lay in thinking that I had a desolate future.
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It is important not to suppress your feelings altogether when you are depressed. It is equally important to avoid terrible arguments or expressions of outrage. You should steer clear of emotionally damaging behavior. People forgive, but it is best not to stir things up to the point at which forgiveness is required. When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless.
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The idea of what it is like to lose everything is awful.
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Depressed people cannot lead a revolution because depressed people can barely manage to get out of bed and put on their shoes and socks.
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Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron ... Like physical pain that becomes chronic, it is miserable not so much because it is intolerable in the moment as because it is intolerable to have known it in the moments gone and to look forward only to knowing it in the moments to come.
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Depression means that you have no point of view.
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Every organization does good and bad things.
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I started this book to forgive my parents and ended it by becoming a parent. Understanding backward liberated me to live forward.
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When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes-and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history.