Quotes About Acceptance

There is a classic moment in 'The Sun Also Rises' when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, "Gradually and then suddenly." When someone asks how I lost my mind, that's all I can say too.

I've been looking for a feeling like that everywhere I go. I've been waiting for someone to see all the good in me at every truck stop and intersection along the way. I've been waiting all my life for the moment to arrive when I can just stop. Stop looking

I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together- the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night- can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out. But that was long ago.

Doing nothing is opting for the sweetness of stillness...Instead of fighting with that which you cannot control, you might as well just see it through...

The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death. When I look ahead, all I can see is my final demise. And they say, But maybe not for seventy or eighty years. And I say, Maybe you, but me, I'm already gone.

Divorce has taught us how to sleep with friends, sleep with enemies, and then act like it's all perfectly normal in the morning.

And then I think of the Velvet Underground's doleful song Jesus, from their third and least renowned or appreciated album. It is my favorite. Jesus / Help me find my proper place / Help me in my weakness / 'Cause I'm falling out of grace. The only words in the song, repeated repeatedly, composed by Lou Reed, a Jew. You see, in the hour of darkness, it is easier to turn to the Son of God than to God Himself, for some reason. I'm not sure why.

You don't need an excuse to be depressed.

Because, frankly, I have a tough time feeling that feminism has done a damn bit of good if I can't be the way I am and have the world accommodate it on some level.

I tried to remind myself that Rafe was not the problem. The problem, as Dr. Sterling explained it to me and as I myself knew, was that I was fucked up. Rafe was merely a makeshift solution I'd come up with, a pill I took to make the bad feelings go away. But now that he was not cooperating so well, now that he was refusing to be used this way, now that he was insisting that he wanted to be my boyfriend and not my panacea, he was no longer part of the solution. He was part of the problem.

The best people are the ones you have to forgive for everything. You have no choice; it would be worse to live without them.

life was one long distraction from the inevitable.

Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

I think it is better to know the worst, rather than trying to imagine it.

The word "autistic" is accurate. But so are other words that we no longer use to describe people: spinster (unmarried woman), hobo (migrant worker), cripple (person with a physical handicap), and so on. The fact that a person is unmarried or has sustained a mobility-reducing injury or birth defect certainly figures into their life experiences, but it does not define their character—unless they or we let it.

If we can't start by seeing an autistic child as inherently capable, interesting, and valuable, no amount of education or therapy we layer on top is going to matter.

The child who lives with autism may look "normal," but his behavior can be perplexing and downright unruly.

If you're treading quicksand in the swamp of what-might- have-been, you can be sure that's the message your child gets. You're a rare person if being constantly reminded of your shortcomings spurs you to improve. For the rest of us, it's a self-esteem squasher. Time to grab for that overhead vine and realize that only a pencil dot separates "bitter" and "better.

In a widely read New York Times article in December 2004, Jack Thomas, a tenth grader with Asperger's syndrome, got the world's attention by stating, "We don't have a disease, so we can't be cured. This is just the way we are.

My autism is part of who I am, not all of who I am.

It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself. Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered . . . And His reward was desolation, crucifixion.

Oh, how I pray for conforming to the acceptable will of God. I do not want to miss one lesson. Yet I find that events do not change souls. It is our response to them which finally affects us. - Elisabeth Elliot

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to

It is a time for quietness and prayer. Death is present with us every day of our lives, it behooves us to take note of its nearness, not as a threat, but as our common experience on the way to grace. There is no more to be said. It is better to accept the will of God, and be silent.