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We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it's purposeful.

Andrew Solomon

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Andrew Solomon
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 30
Author
Clinical Psychologist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Torment
Endure
Bear
Bears
Pain
Cannot
Great
Purposeful
Believe
Pointless

More quotes by Andrew Solomon

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Then I repeated these words to my spirits: 'Leave me be give me peace and let me do the work of my life. I will never forget you.' Something about that incantation was particularly appealing to me. 'I will never forget you'-- as though one had to address the pride of the spirits, as though one wanted them to feel good about being exorcised.
Andrew Solomon
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I had always wanted to have children, so it caused me a lot of grief when I was younger, and I had supposed that gay people could not be parents.
Andrew Solomon
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I think it's up to the parents to determine whether what they're doing is consigning their child to difficulty. It's not as though they were crippling their children after they were born.
Andrew Solomon
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People who believe that they are going to be excommunicated and shamed, or whatever other dark things may happen to them, are much less likely to enter open, loving relationships. And they are also much less likely to have the self-esteem that is required to be monogamous and loving. And in consequence, they are much less likely to create families.
Andrew Solomon
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I don't believe that raising my voice in song is going to be pleasing to a God who is sitting upstairs somewhere, waiting to be pleased.
Andrew Solomon
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The absence of words is the absence of intimacy. There are experiences that are starved for language.
Andrew Solomon
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I grew up in a very rationalist household. My father, in particular, came from that mid-century tradition of thinking science will ultimately explain everything.
Andrew Solomon
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Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it.
Andrew Solomon
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The Church responds to antiquated social realities, and those realities remain much more current in Utah precisely because of the Church.
Andrew Solomon
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It's deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth.
Andrew Solomon
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Labeling a child's mind as diseased-whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism-may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone.
Andrew Solomon
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It is easy to keep secrets by being honest in an ironic tone of voice.
Andrew Solomon
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The idea of what it is like to lose everything is awful.
Andrew Solomon
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The strengthening of faith, I think, is the ultimate goal of organized religion altogether.
Andrew Solomon
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A lot of people are very political when they are young, and then they outgrow it.
Andrew Solomon
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Antonio Gramsci said that social reformers should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This means that one must have the intellectual ability to see how bad things are and the emotional ability to look forward with hope. It's a hard combination to sustain, but if you can do it, you can change the world.
Andrew Solomon
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In coming to an appreciation of the Mormon Church, one of the things that has been most compelling to me is the Mormon understanding of family, which extends beyond the general injunction to be fruitful and multiply, and addresses the permanence of love relationships into eternity, and embraces the sanctity of having children.
Andrew Solomon
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I have found that the greatest stories of acceptance and love and the ugliest stories of hideous cruelty and abuse have equally been perpetrated in the name of Christian faith.
Andrew Solomon
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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
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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