David Rakoff Quotes

I do tend to be an anxious fellow, and I do tend to see the world as a little darker than perhaps it genuinely is, but I also do appreciate much more than a rosy scenario, I appreciate straight news. I appreciate honesty.

If I laugh a couple of times a day, I'm doing good. People think it's their God-given right to be happy, and it's just not. It's something you've got to work at. I like to paint the human condition, and the human condition is not smiles and happy people.

My roommates are all such happy-go-lucky guys, and I carry some of the stress around a lot more.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

I don't think I could, with a straight face, describe myself as a completely positive person, but I'm not overly negative, either. On the whole, most writers think plots through to their consequences, and it's not always a sunny place. I have an occupational temperament for anxiety.

Pressure and stress is the common cold of the psyche.

I'm less Pollyanna now. That's probably healthy.

I never really thought of myself as depressed so much as paralyzed by hope.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

I'm not always optimistic. You wouldn't have all cylinders cooking if you were always like Mary Poppins.

No woman can be completely happy at any one moment in time. They're always anticipating the next thing to argue or complain about.

I'm not tortured and neurasthenic - I'm really not.

We all don't feel like a million bucks, even if you're an actor. You just don't; not all of us feel like movie stars.

You'll find Swedes - maybe not as much as the Finns - thriving in melancholy.

Stress is a downward spiral, and you can only overcome it with a positive perspective.

At times, I've been incapacitated by anxiety and unhappiness. You really know what joy is if you have experienced the opposite.

I was very lucky that I didn't end up a basket case.

Constantly scanning the world for the negative comes with a great cost. It undercuts our creativity, raises our stress levels, and lowers our motivation and ability to accomplish goals.

Bad things happen everyday but you're not going to be any happier thinking about them. So I don't think about them.

This is, i think, very much the Age of Anxiety, the age of the neurosis, because along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves.

Just for the record, the weather today is increasing turmoil with a possible physical and emotional breakdown.

It won't do you any good to run if you're running the wrong way. I've developed a new philosophy...I only dread one day at a time.

Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.

Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don't want.

Depression will always follow any decision to avoid a priority.