If you stimulate seizures in an animal every day, the seizures eventually become automatic; the animal will go on having them once a day even if you withdraw the stimulation. In much the same way, the...
If we tolerate prejudice toward any group, we tolerate it toward all groups, he said. I couldn’t have relationships that were conditional on excluding my brother—or anyone else. We are all in one figh...
If the earth could feed itself and us without rain, and if we conquered the weather and declared permanent sun, would we not miss grey days and summer storms?
I was walking down the street today, she said, and I thought, I am probably dying. And then I thought, should we have cherries or pears at lunch? And the two things felt too much the same.
I told her that what was most important to me was not whether she loved a man or a woman, but that she loved and was loved well—that she experience passion, and the wonderful surprise of finding that...
I love the sense of vast transformation that hangs on us at this new millennium, the feeling that we are at the brink of knowing more than people have ever known before.
I had to know the stories these women had to tell, she explained, because I wanted to understand very specifically what each one had to vanquish.
Disability is not predictive of the happiness of either the parent or the child, which reflects the larger puzzle that people who have won the lottery are, in the long run and on average, only margina...
An integrated educational system benefits many people with horizontal identities; it likewise helps those who share a classroom with them. Similarly, building a compassionate society benefits not only...
All kinds of attributes make one less able. Illiteracy and poverty are disabilities, and so are stupidity, obesity, and boringness. Extreme age and extreme youth are both disabilities. Faith is a disa...
Actually travel is the opposite of depression. Depression is a curling inward, and travel is an opening outward.
The symptoms of depression cause depression. Loneliness is depressing, but depression also causes loneliness.
[I]f you live abroad any good while, the notion of is permanently compromised. You will always be missing another place, and no national logic will ever again seem fully obvious to you.
The people who succeed despite depression do three things. First, they seek an understanding of what's happening. They they accept that this is a permanent situation. And then they have to transcend t...
The difficulty of learning spoken English for a person profoundly deaf from an early age has been likened to a hearing American trying to learn spoken Japanese while locked within a soundproof glass c...
Most people don’t like one another’s unhappiness very much. Few can cope with the idea of depression divorced from external reality. Many would prefer to think that if you’re suffering, it’s with reas...
It is a surprise to me to like myself; among all the elaborate possibilities I contemplated for my future, that never figured. My hard-won contentment reflects the simple truth that inner peace often...
I wish I'd been accepted sooner and better. When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes...
I still remember the moment. I ordered a chicken salad and it tasted like chalk. I knew I was depressed. And I went downhill so fast. That’s when I really started drinking. I just did everything to fu...
Biology is not destiny. There are ways to lead a good life with depression. Indeed, people who learn from their depression can develop a particular moral profundity from the experience,