Quote

The idea of anyone contemplating our family and witnessing the affection that we all have for one another and seeing evil in it is deeply hurtful and sad and also deeply bewildering.

Andrew Solomon

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Andrew Solomon
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: October 30
Author
Clinical Psychologist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Anyone
Evil
Bewildering
Family
Witnessing
Idea
Hurtful
Another
Contemplating
Also
Affection
Ideas
Deeply
Seeing

More quotes by 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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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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The experience of being depressed and emerging from depression made me understand the idea of a soul. I felt that the language in which one could best acknowledge that drew from faith.
Andrew Solomon
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I encounter a lot of prejudice and a lot of darkness. I have to negotiate constantly through situations that are uncomfortable or difficult or strange.
Andrew Solomon
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The campaign against polygamy, around which a lot of anti-Mormon sentiment was organized, seems horrific to me.
Andrew Solomon
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It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.
Andrew Solomon
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You don't think in depression that you've put on a gray veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you're seeing truly.
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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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
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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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I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand
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 don't understand what the nature of God is. But I do have the feeling that I'm at some feet, and lucky to be there.
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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I hope the Church will examine what is good and what is ill, and what good could be achieved by getting the suicidal, self-destructive, possibly carnal, or celibate to move toward this experience of love.
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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Sometimes, people end up thankful for what they mourned. You cannot achieve this state by seeking tragedy, but you can keep yourself open more to sorrow's richness than to unmediated despair. Tragedies with happy endings may be sentimental tripe, or they may be the true meaning of love.
Andrew Solomon
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Being gay is immutable. Maybe someday we'll figure out more of the science and it will be changeable, but we have no leads so far.
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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Penalizing homosexuals does not save any innocent victims. The idea that God and the Church accept these people while they are celibate and then if they go off and do something with someone else and both derive joy from it without any apparent harm to anyone else, the Church excommunicates them - that, to me, is bizarre.
Andrew Solomon