Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

It's not so much about killing an animal, it's being at peace and you don't have to worry about all the other things that go on. That's a couple of hours a week that you get to escape but it's nice to do that.

Walking alone, just thinking - that's treatment, man. That's the most comforting rehab I've known.

All of these guys who went through rehab have done so much therapy and so much work on themselves that they're totally open to talking about anything because they've done a lot of healing. You have to respect that.

I have discovered the value of psychology and psychiatry, that their teachings can undo knots in us and permit life to flow again and aid us in becoming more truly human.

I'm able to laugh now, because I've gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy to heal over the years, my music's been wonderful for me. But I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself. To be fair, I was about 19, so ... I went to Catholic school and all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, 'Oh, is this just the way adults are?' I was very naive.

As anyone who has received or dispensed psychotherapy knows, it's a profession whose mainspring is love. Nearly everyone who visits a therapist has a love disorder of one sort or another, and each has a story to tell - of love lost or denied, love twisted or betrayed, love perverted or shackled to violence. Broken attachments litter the office floors like pick-up sticks. People appear with frayed seams and spilling pockets.

If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.

A mental healer may be a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist may or may not be a mental healer.

The vagaries of the industry and show business itself would not lead one to conclude a lengthy career - because things change. Popularities come and go. The tragedy of it is that somebody like Robin Williams should suffer from that, and be driven to commit suicide. If ever there was an untimely, unfair death, it was him.

Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.

I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists

The psychiatrist's office: the only place I can be sure my story will be treated as sad, but interesting.

A good laugh is the best pesticide.

Becoming active is the key remedy for depression.

Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times.

I actually have a great deal of respect for antidepressants; I think they can be enormously mighty tools toward recovery.

Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.

Both therapy and friendship possessed the common denominator of discovering a self.

I'm not as depressed as I used to be. The Prozac's working!

Of course, the surest way to free yourself from an existential crisis is through comedy.

It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.

The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found.

I run; that's sort of my meditation. I've been to therapy in the past when I've had crisis moments in my life; I think it's very healthy. I think that's even a more acceptable attitude in America actually than it is probably back at home [in England].

Some people get therapy, some people get to make movies.

The book was just something that came along after we played the Super Bowl and I wrote a little essay that went online. Then I had two or three weeks and I said, wow, that essay was pretty good. Maybe I'll try and write some other stuff. Writing about the depression, I just felt - you know, when you write a book like this, you have to open up your life. You have to be willing to do so to a certain degree.