Quotes from Andrew Solomon

Woody Allen once quipped that dwarf is once of the four funniest words in the English language. To be in your very essence perceived as comical is a significant burden.

M? simt tot timpul ca ?i cum fiecare ar vrea o buc??ic? din mine.

The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disability, and that only if you are among the most fortunate.

Faith is a disability insofar as it constrains you from self-interest; atheism is a disability inasmuch as it shields you from hope. One might see power as a disability, too, for the isolation in which it imprisons those who wield it.

The wish to fix people reflects pessimism about their condition and optimism about the method of repair.

I think all love is one-third projection and one-third acceptance and never more than one-third knowledge and insight.

When an illness is viewed as inexplicable and impenetrable, people tend to react to it with one of two extremes: either they stigmatize it or they romanticize it.

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.

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.

Now, it's not that I think that being gay is the most amazing, wonderful thing in the world, but I have a husband; I have a life; I have friends who I've met through this. It's who I am.

I think that people are most comfortable when the world is orderly. I think there's the sense that when you begin questioning basic distinctions, such as the distinction between being male and being female, it represents a threat to the social order.

We live in the right time, even if it doesn't always feel like it.

No perfectionist has ever met his own benchmarks, and no one so famished for admiration has ever received enough of it.

I would have had an easier life if I were straight, but I would not be me. And I now like being myself better than the idea of being someone else, someone who, to be honest, I have neither the option of being nor the ability fully to imagine.

My risk tolerance is higher than some people's, but it's not nearly as high as some people's. I don't want to exaggerate my bravado. I haven't been on the front lines. I haven't ever stepped on a land mine.

No one much wants to be belittled, but we tolerate slurs surprisingly often for ourselves; for our lionised children, we demand freedom from insult.

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.

Life is enriched by difficulty; love is made more acute when it requires exertion.

We can never afford to be complacent; there is no such thing as security when it comes to human rights.

When I was growing up, I kept hoping that I wasn't really gay because I wanted to have children. I went through a long, tortured period, so the fact that I have been able to be true to myself and have a family has been the nicest surprise of my adulthood.

Love is circumstantial we can love anyone if need be and losing the one we love is the singular catastrophe. Time does not heal it. Every present moment yearns for even the roughest past.

As you ripen, you'll notice that time is the weirdest thing in the world, that these surprises are relentless, and that getting older is not a stroll but an ambush.

Gay rights are not primarily marriage rights, and for the millions who live in unaccepting places with no resources, dignity remains elusive. I am lucky to have forged meaning and built identity, but that's still a rare privilege. And gay people deserve more, collectively, than the crumbs of justice.

It's important to say that depression has biological underpinnings, and that while medications do not seem to create irreversible changes in the brain, repeated depressive episodes do.