Quotes from Andrew Solomon

Every stage of life longs for others. When one is young and eager, one aspires to maturity, and everyone older would like nothing better than to be young.

Travel is an exercise partly in broadening yourself and partly in defining your own limits.

I often say that the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality.

Parenting is no sport for perfectionists.

My parents' usual reprimand was to remind me that I was not the Prince of Wales.

The anxiety phase of my first depression lasted six months. It was incredibly paralyzing.

Forging meaning is about changing yourself. Building identity is about changing the world.

At the end of the day, will God be interested primarily in whether I have been kind and helped others, or in whether I was baptized and how?

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.

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.

I have always believed in trying to be a good person and giving to the world, and treating others in a just, kind, merciful way.

Every organization does good and bad things.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep out of me.

I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul.

A sense of humor is the best indicator that you will recover; it is often the best indicator that people will love you. Sustain that and you have hope.

It is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.

Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.

Dealing with depression effectively is a mark not of weakness, but of strength.

I like the relative literacy of at least some of England. I mean, I didn't come for the food or the weather!

I loathe having a fragile brain and knowing as I make any plan that I should provide for the possibility that my mind may betray me at short notice.

One the one hand, the simple fact that there are children and that I do have an effect on them has been one of the most potent antidepressants that I've ever had. And on the other hand, there are moments when I feel imprisoned by the reality that I can no longer make my decisions just for myself, that I have to consider the interests of others.

Writing 'The Noonday Demon' turned me into a professional depressive, which is a weird thing to be. A class at the university I attended assigns the book and invited me to be a guest lecturer.

I'm attached to my children with whatever flaws they have, and if some glorious angel broke through the living room ceiling and offered to exchange them for other, better children, I'd cling to my kids and pray away this specter.

People who are different are constantly dealing with families who don't understand them.