I knew that we all have the capacity to act in self-destructive ways, nevertheless I had a kind of faith that the desire to live was more powerful. [6-7]
. . .
Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this — stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us — we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand. [10]
. . .
Your jokes are aggressive, you get your revenge, and you feel a bit better. Your humour seems to work: you don't hurt so much afterwards. But you also seem to lose the drive to better understand the situation. [15]
. . .
Even now it's very hard for me to trust my feelings. But when you laugh it means you believe my feelings, my reality. When you laugh, I know that you see things exactly the way I do. [17]
. . .
Admiring our children may temporarily lift our self-esteem by signalling to those around us what fantastic parents we are and what terrific kids we have — but it isn't doing much for a child's sense of self. In trying so hard to be different from our parents, we're actually doing much the same thing — doling out empty praise the way an earlier generation doled out thoughtless criticism. If we do it to avoid thinking about our child and her world, and about what our child feels, then praise, just like criticism, is ultimately expressing our indifference. [20]
. . .
Being present builds a child's confidence because it lets the child know that she is worth thinking about. [21]
. . .
At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why. [27]
. . .
"Love can't change what's wrong with me," Michael said, "because love feels threatening. It's the thing that made me break down before my wedding. Being loved is the problem, because love is a demand — when you're loved, someone wants more of you." [53]
. . .
In other words, paranoid fantasies are disturbing, but they are a defence. They protect us from a more disastrous emotional state — namely, the feeling that no one is concerned about us, that no one cares. [83]
. . .
When we envy our children we deceive ourselves — we think too little of them and too well of ourselves. [93]
. . .
"I'm not living my life as fully as possible," she told me, "but I'm not sure what I'd like my life to be." [96]
. . .
Most of us have come down with a case of lovesickness at one time or another, suffering its fever to a greater or lesser degree. In severe cases, lovesickness can lead to delusional behaviours (stalking, for example) or sexual obsession. When we are lovesick, we feel that our emotional boundaries, the walls between us and the objects of our desire, have fallen away. We feel a weighty physical longing, an ache. We believe that we are in love. [110]
. . .
Like the paranoid, the lovesick are keen information-gatherers, but one soon noticed an unconscious intent in their observations — each new fact confirms their delusion. [112]
. . .
We resist change. Committing ourselves to a small change, even one that is unmistakably in our best interest, is often more frightening than ignoring a dangerous situation.
. . .
We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one. [123]
. . .
We hesitate, in the face of change, because change is loss. But if we don't accept *some* loss — for Tamitha, the loss of her baby photos — we can lose everything. [124]
. . .
Better to be in the position of having lost something than to be something someone forgot. [135]
. . .
It's also not uncommon to use some large-scale calamity, or someone else's personal disaster — the newspapers are full of both — to distract oneself from one's own destructive impulses. [142]
. . .
[W]e can sometimes exploit a disaster to block internal change...[W]e can take on a catastrophe to stop ourselves feeling and thinking — and to avoid responsibility for our own intimate acts of destruction. [145]
. . .
[B]eing boring *was* aggressive — it was a way of controlling, and excluding, others: a way of being seen, but not seeing. [150]
. . .
Psychoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we're going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we're creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present. [157]
. . .
This entire discussion — my sense of being reproached and my sense of self-reproach, this whole saga of doubt and trouble — all of it has been conducted before either of us says a word.[169]
. . .
I take almost everything personally. I get on the Tube: I get a seat — victory; I don't get a seat — defeat. I get a parking place — victory. I don't get a parking space — defeat. The repair man can come over straightaway — victory. I've left a fleck of shit in the toilet — defeat. These tiny, tiny moments are the way I measure my progress in the struggle that is daily life. Moment to moment, my thinking is utterly, unremittingly, banal. [171]
. . .
I was operating on the assumption that people were basically reproachful. And because that was built into the way I did almost everything, I felt caged. All these moments weren't just the way I thought about my life — they *were* my life. [171]
. . .
"But isn't it impossible not to take things personally?" Tom asked.
. . .
"Sure. I get irritated, but I'll find the reason the patient needs me to be irritated." [174-175]
. . .
When you have no choice, you're doomed, you're stuck in a web of reproach and self-reproach. You have this way of thinking — a way of being — so deep in you that you can't question it, you can't even know it. You just live it. Having a choice is a very, very big liberation. [176]
. . .
[R]ealism, no matter how painful, was almost always more reassuring than reassurance. [203]
. . .
He didn't want to die in a state of panic or persecution, but to be "able to live my death". [204]
. . .
[H]e could more easily bear the idea of his death, accept the silence, because he felt himself alive in the mind of another. [205]
