Quote

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

Andrew Solomon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Andrew Solomon
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 30
Author
Clinical Psychologist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Identities
Wake
Experiences
Painful
Seek
Identity

More quotes by Andrew Solomon

Image
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
Image
I don't believe that there is anyone of faith whose faith would not be strengthened by those experiences of family.
Andrew Solomon
Image
With children who have never said a word, parents tend to assume, for better or for worse, that there isn't any language there.
Andrew Solomon
Image
When you believe that you cannot stitch your own heart back together, go to work on the hearts of other people there is no surer way to repair yourself than to repair them.
Andrew Solomon
Image
I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong.
Andrew Solomon
Image
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.
Andrew Solomon
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.
Andrew Solomon
Image
I'm sure that if we had enough sophistication, someone could look at what my changes in brain structure were as I came to feel more deeply in love.
Andrew Solomon
Image
Being gay is immutable.
Andrew Solomon
Image
Every organization does good and bad things.
Andrew Solomon
Image
I do think that if the Church can see its way to greater tolerance, Church members will have greater exposure to gay people, and the lives of those gay people will be better.
Andrew Solomon
Image
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.
Andrew Solomon
Image
Psychologically, I will not have to seek far if I decide to kill myself, because in my mind and heart I am more ready for this than for the unplanned daily tribulations that mark off the mornings and afternoons.
Andrew Solomon
Image
That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.
Andrew Solomon
Image
I have spent a lot of my life trying to do good and be a humanitarian, to write about difficult places, and to tell the story of oppressed peoples.
Andrew Solomon
Image
The absence of marriages will result in all kinds of financial burdens that gay people wouldn't face if they could get married.
Andrew Solomon
Image
I feel, as a matter nearly of faith, that if you have known a certain amount of suffering and have emerged out of it into the light, you are obliged to share that light with as many of the still-beleaguered as possible.
Andrew Solomon
Image
Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger.
Andrew Solomon