Being in a marriage and having children is the greatest pleasure, but it is certainly not the easiest pleasure. It is not like eating ice cream. Andrew Solomon More Quotes by Andrew Solomon More Quotes From Andrew Solomon The tragedies that are being brought about vastly outweigh the benefits that are being achieved. Andrew Solomon benefits tragedy If really good people who are deeply committed and who are thriving spiritually have to beat down the nature with which they seem to have been born and cut themselves off from the full realization of love, how can that be pleasing to God? Andrew Solomon cutting realization people 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. Andrew Solomon ironic church long The campaign against polygamy, around which a lot of anti-Mormon sentiment was organized, seems horrific to me. Andrew Solomon polygamy sentiments campaigns 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 joy people ideas I think morality is more important than ever before. As we gain more power, the question of what we do with it becomes more and more crucial, and we are very close to really having divine powers of creation and destruction. The future of the entire ecological system and the future of the whole of life is really now in our hands. And what to do with it is an ethical question and also a scientific question. Andrew Solomon morality important thinking I did grow up in a household in which I felt that to be myself was to damage the people I loved. Andrew Solomon damage growing-up people 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. Andrew Solomon stories writing trying I got into my first serious relationship with a man when I was twenty-three. I had, before that, sort of a typical, sad history of relatively promiscuous sexual encounters with men I didn't know, because I felt that if I were involved with people I did know, other people would know that I was gay, and it was something that I needed to keep so secret. Andrew Solomon gay men people I'd had a vaguely Jewish upbringing, but no deep connection to faith. Andrew Solomon upbringing deep-connections connections I grew up feeling that to be gay was a tragedy. I didn't grow up thinking that it was morally wrong, but I grew up thinking that it would make me marginal, prevent me from having children, and quite possibly prevent me from having a meaningful long relationship. It seemed that this condition would leave me with a vastly reduced life. Andrew Solomon growing-up meaningful children I went through elementary school being bullied and teased. I remember someone - I can't recall his name, but I can see his face - who decided on the school bus, when I was ten or eleven, to call me "Percy." That was somehow supposed to connect to the fact that I wasn't very athletic. I was, in fact, also not very coordinated. I was not very masculine, by the standards of ten-year-olds. I remember being on the school bus and everyone chanting, "Percy! Percy! Percy!" at me. Andrew Solomon names years school If you are married and you go off and have an affair with someone, if you are a husband who does that, it may potentially hurt your wife enormously. But it seems to me likely also to compromise your marriage. That seems to me to be a harm. Andrew Solomon wife husband hurt 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 tradition father thinking It is easy to keep secrets by being honest in an ironic tone of voice. Andrew Solomon ironic voice secret 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 much-love study I felt a funeral in my brain, and mourners to and fro kept treading, treading till I felt that sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, a service, like a drum, kept beating, beating, till I felt my mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box and creak across my soul with those same boots of lead again, then space began to toll, as if the heavens were a bell and being were an ear, and I, and silence, some strange race wrecked, solitary, here. Just then, a plank in reason broke, and I fell down and down and hit a world at every plunge, and finished knowing then. Andrew Solomon space knowing race Philip Galanes has fashioned a novel both bleak and funny about a young man's struggle to sort out his troubled love: the too-strong love for his mother, the too-weak love for his suicidal father, and the all-consuming love of anonymous sexual encounters. Pointed and acute, this story tells of the narrator's many betrayals of others and their many betrayals of him. It exists in an uncomfortable moral space where the humor of terrible things sometimes outweighs, but never obscures, their poignancy. Andrew Solomon betrayal strong mother 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. Andrew Solomon attachment parent kids I like the relative literacy of at least some of England. I mean, I didn't come for the food or the weather! Andrew Solomon england weather mean
