Tag: Andrew Solomon

“The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality…”

– Andrew Solomon

“There are three things people tend to confuse: depression, grief and sadness.

Grief is explicitly reactive. If you have a loss and you feel incredibly unhappy, and then, six months later, you are still deeply sad, but you’re functioning a little better, it’s probably grief, and it will probably ultimately resolve itself in some measure.

If you experience a catastrophic loss, and you feel terrible, and six months later you can barely function at all, then it’s probably a depression that was triggered by the catastrophic circumstances.

The trajectory tells us a great deal. People think of depression as being just sadness. It’s much, much too much sadness, much too much grief at far too slight a cause.”

– Andrew Solomon

“There’s no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss, and that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy.”

– Andrew Solomon