Humor is an escape, because you cannot think about your problems when you are trying to be funny; so, in essence, "being a humorist" gives you a valid excuse to hide from your pain.
Fear, as opposed to anxiety, has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured... anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object.
You have problems, you think drink helps, then you have two problems.
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to - alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person - you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.
It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don't agree. The wounds remain. Time - the mind, protecting its sanity - covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.
Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night.
The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.
Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.
After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.
I knew racial discrimination at its worst in the 1930s. I lived with the humility of it but I never lost my sense of humor. Humor is the escape valve from the deadly reality of adversity.
Pressure is a privilege ... it's what you do with it that matters.
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.
I have given a name to my pain, and call it "dog".
I drink to make other people interesting.
Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
Games helped me a lot when The Rev died. It was something I able to go do and stay in the house and not have to be outside and deal with people. But I also found a community online that I was able to escape the feeling I was having of losing a best friend.
When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it.
When people are feeling a bunch of feelings or there's something happening within the world, a lot of people get healing through music, or a lot of people's go-to entertainment to find some answers or understand something.
Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
Let's be honest: Ignoring is acting, and nothing more — acting as though the words or actions of your oppressors don't hurt. You hear the words, you feel the insults, and you bear the blows.
I constantly peed in my pants up until the 8th grade and wore an extra-large sailor uniform from kindergarten to 8th grade because my mom was scared I'd grow out of it. So I learned to make fun of myself at school and summer camp.
In looking for humor, keep in mind this guideline: Sometimes it takes a little time to see the humor in your upsets; you may not find something to laugh about immediately.
