Quote

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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Andrew Solomon
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 30
Author
Clinical Psychologist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Love
Engines
Flaws
Intimacy
Depression
Despair
Specter
Loss
Flaw
Without
Engine
Thing
Anticipation

More quotes by Andrew Solomon

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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
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There is no question that abuse, drugs and exposure to violence at home can exacerbate someone's criminal tendencies enormously. But there are many, many criminals who don't come from that background.
Andrew Solomon
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It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.
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'm a huge believer in science. But I don't think it explains everything.
Andrew Solomon
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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
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I had known a couple of people who had died, but the loss of my mother contained something of the profoundly unknowable.
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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My parents deeply and truly loved each other, and if my mother hadn't died they would have been together forever. They were together for as much of forever as was given to them. They really loved my brother and me and were very good to us. It gave the model of how to have a happy marriage and family, but it also set the bar very high.
Andrew Solomon
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Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds.
Andrew Solomon
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People … don't want to be cured or changed or eliminated. They want to be whoever it is that they've come to be.
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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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.
Andrew Solomon
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I really feel that the Church leaders have blood on their hands. I feel that there are gay Mormons who have committed suicide or whose lives have been destroyed because of the attitude of the Church.
Andrew Solomon
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I think what the Church should ideally do, and does appear to do in the context of straight relationships, is to support people in crossing from the easier pleasure of momentary carnal satisfaction, into the more difficult pleasure of love and family and relationship.
Andrew Solomon
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There is a line that I always loved from Lucretius. He said, The sublime is the art of exchanging easier for more difficult pleasures. The presumption of that formulation is that the more difficult pleasures are actually better than the easier pleasures. That is why one makes the exchange.
Andrew Solomon
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Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory
Andrew Solomon
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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.
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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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