Tom King Quotes

After an injury, I think you have to be strong mentally.

There is nothing incompatible about laughter and demons, nor about athletic achievement and depression. Mike Flanagan made me laugh, too. But mostly, he made me brave.

I'm a big believer in the idea that while we are the sum of our tears, we are also the product of our choices in how we deal with those tears.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

You can't embrace your whole life if you're shut down. I found out that I can't just run away and shut down. I'm losing the rest of my life doing that.

One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness.

We all hit moments when we feel helpless. The test is how we react to that feeling. We can either learn from it and move forward or let it drag us down.

When I feel confused or depressed, I remember back to junior high and I silently repeat, 'This, too, shall pass.'

I'm a creative person who had a lot of dark time in my life. I can still get to it: I can still go to a relationship or a time when things weren't great. But it's getting further and further from me.

There are always reasons for people's behaviour, and it's easy just to dismiss them and assume that we already know their story, especially if they're no good at showing their emotions. Life gives you all these knocks, it's so easy to form a shell to protect yourself. I've done it myself.

It's not that I want to necessarily avoid my darker moments, but I don't capitalize them and put a crown on them and tote them around as the answer anymore.

I know some people are like, 'I'm depressed, and I'm a struggling artist,' and that really works for some people, but that doesn't work for me. I have to be really happy, even when I'm writing my depressing songs; I have to come through that stage before I can write.

I can laugh at my own grief.

The hardest thing you can do is smile when you are ill, in pain, or depressed. But this no-cost remedy is a necessary first half-step if you are to start on the road to recovery.

Maybe I have this fascination with the dark side because I live in the light. I don't have any dysfunction, and I've never experienced trauma.

I have spent much of my adult life flinching with pain as I tried to pull out the threads that bound the shadows of my past to me.

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.

You start acting in spite of your neuroses, not because of them.

One of the great things to pretend is that you're not only alright, you're in great shape. Now to have that come true - I've actually gone on stage depressed and that's worked its magic on me, 'cause if I can convince you that I'm alright, then maybe I can convince me.

With my divorce, and even during the end of my marriage before it even got publicly bad, how I decided to cope with things was to go on the treadmill for an hour.

Sometimes, I get afraid it has defined me, that sense of grief, loss and illness. But actually, it is about allowing myself to take hold and say: 'This is part of who I am, but not only who I am.'

Without comedy as a defense mechanism I wouldn't be able to survive.

When things have gone really wrong in my life, I've cried like a child. I have really, really cried. I cry it out. Two-three days I cry, and then I'm like, enough, time to deal with reality and figure a way out. This is the way I have dealt with everything.

'Scar Tissue' is the only book I've ever written when I've felt completely toxic, ill.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?