Andrew Solomon Quotes

I've had great success and I've had catastrophic failure. It's really how you handle the rough stuff that defines you, I think.

A lot of life is dealing with your curse, dealing with the cards you were given that aren't so nice. Does it make you into a monster, or can you temper it in some way, or accept it and go in some other direction?

It is always more difficult to fight one's own failings than the power of an adversary.

Pippin chooses love and finds a greater sense of himself at the end of all the madness. I relate to him in many ways. I have been through stuff, thought I knew best, and often been proven wrong.

I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

It's a healthy thing to get some bad criticism. I'm still here and I'm fine, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't get to you reading the negative stuff.

Failure and things of this sort - you can take it one of two ways. You can either let that hurt you and really affect the way that you live your life in the future, or you can use that as an opportunity for growth.

I think everyone in their life goes through challenges, whether it's love or money, kids or illness... You have to really not run away from that stuff.

In our personal and professional lives, we are constantly hit with one adversity after the other, most of which we have no control over. But the four things we have total control over is how we react, how we adapt, how we breathe, and how we take action.

In life, when what has happened happens to you, you don't digest it.

I'm sometimes surprised by myself: no matter how much time has passed, I wasn't able to accept my inferiority complex. But I did.

We get older, and we get more wrinkles, but fundamentally, we stay the same... You have the same fears and doubts and concerns and dreams and passions and all those kinds of things, so I feel like you don't change as much as you think you do.

If something is going on and you are struggling, embrace it. You are growing.

Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if thou dost not succeed in doing everything according to right principles; but when thou bast failed, return back again, and be content if the greater part of what thou doest is consistent with man's nature, and love this to which thou returnest

Something horrible may have happened to you, but you always have a choice in how you respond to it. You have the "Why does bad stuff always happen to me? I'm never going to find happiness" option, and the "This sucks but I'm going to learn and evolve from it, examine what role I played in it, and ultimately it will help me become the person I'm supposed to be" option.

Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines. That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness.

Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love.

The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

No matter what, I need to maintain my sense of self and always be true to who I am. And that while there are always going to be roadblocks along the way, you're going to be just fine, as long as you learn from each setback.

Tell me what you are doing with your suffering, and I will tell you who you are.

The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense of life.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself, like that bunny in Runaway Bunny runs to its mother, but you are the mother and you’ll see that later and be very, very proud.

The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles - preferably of his own making - in order to triumph.