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We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences.

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
Seek
Identity
Identities
Wake
Experiences
Painful

More quotes by 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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I'm a huge believer in science. But I don't think it explains everything.
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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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
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Our needs are our greatest asset. It turns out I've learned to give all the things that I need.
Andrew Solomon
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I found myself losing interest in almost everything, I didn't want to do any of the things I had previously wanted to do and I didn't know why. Everything there was to do seemed like too much work. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.
Andrew Solomon
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Life is enriched by difficulty love is made more acute when it requires exertion.
Andrew Solomon
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In these xenophobic times, when politicians are stoking everyone's anxiety about threats from abroad, I would argue that engaging with the rest of the world is not only a luxury, in the way that travel is, but actually a moral responsibility.
Andrew Solomon
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I look at the rates of suicide among gay teens. They are so, so high for suicide attempts and for completed suicides.
Andrew Solomon
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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
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When you banish the dragons you banish the heroes.
Andrew Solomon
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It seems particularly ironic that a church that at one stage, a long time ago, fought to redefine marriage should now be so opposed to these attempts to redefine marriage.
Andrew Solomon
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The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep out of me.
Andrew Solomon
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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.
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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I was in fact anxious about whether I would be any good at being a father. And then I met so many people who had been good parents under difficult circumstances, and I felt inspired by them.
Andrew Solomon
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I grew up feeling that to be gay was a tragedy. I didn't grow up thinking that it was morally wrong, but I grew up thinking that it would make me marginal, prevent me from having children, and quite possibly prevent me from having a meaningful long relationship. It seemed that this condition would leave me with a vastly reduced life.
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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It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.
Andrew Solomon
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I think you can't deny that because the cochlear implant exists, the signing world is shrinking.
Andrew Solomon