Depression means that you have no point of view. Andrew Solomon More Quotes by Andrew Solomon More Quotes From Andrew Solomon We live in the right time, even if it doesn't always feel like it. Andrew Solomon right-time ifs feels Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Andrew Solomon love-you believe people I had always thought of myself as fairly tough and fairly strong and fairly able to cope with anything. And then I had a series of personal losses. My mother died. A relationship that I was in came to end, and a variety of other things went awry. Andrew Solomon strong mother loss Psychologically, I will not have to seek far if I decide to kill myself, because in my mind and heart I am more ready for this than for the unplanned daily tribulations that mark off the mornings and afternoons. Andrew Solomon mind heart morning Labeling a child's mind as diseased-whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism-may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone. Andrew Solomon autism giving children Your gender identity is who you are. Sexual identity is who you bounce that off of. Andrew Solomon bounce gender identity 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 grief suffering people Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination. Andrew Solomon imagination exercise children All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Andrew Solomon parent self children I don't accept subtractive models of love, only additive ones. And I believe that in the same way we need species diversity to ensure that the planet can go on, so we need this diversity of affection and diversity of family in order to strengthen the ecosphere of kindness. Andrew Solomon kindness order believe Identity itself should be not a smug label or a gold medal but a revolution. Andrew Solomon labels identity gold That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect. Andrew Solomon essence suicide loss Treating an identity as an illness invites real illness to make a braver stand. Andrew Solomon illness real identity Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle. Andrew Solomon impression struggle ease I met people on college campuses who were defining themselves as genderqueer to express revolutionary feelings, or to communicate their individuality; they were gender fluid without being gender dysphoric. This phenomenon may be culturally significant, but it has only a little bit in common with the people who feel they can have no authentic self in their birth gender. Andrew Solomon college self people I think you can't deny that because the cochlear implant exists, the signing world is shrinking. Andrew Solomon shrinking world thinking If someone says: "I don't want to have a cochlear implant, because I want my child to grow up with a rich sense of deaf culture," he must acknowledge that the deaf culture that exists in the world today has a different scale than the deaf culture that's likely to exist in the world 50 years from now. Andrew Solomon growing-up children years I think it's up to the parents to determine whether what they're doing is consigning their child to difficulty. It's not as though they were crippling their children after they were born. Andrew Solomon parent children thinking I spent years thinking I had to make a choice between being true to myself and being with a man and not having a family, and trying to live something of a lie and being with a woman and having children. Andrew Solomon men lying children I had always wanted to have children, so it caused me a lot of grief when I was younger, and I had supposed that gay people could not be parents. Andrew Solomon gay grief children
