Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn't get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that's okay.
Keith AblowBut insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.
Keith AblowMost of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac.
Keith AblowI think men should be able to veto women's abortions if they're willing to care for the child after it's born.
Keith AblowGod is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing. (207)
Keith AblowWhat was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?
Keith AblowBecause depression is so thematically powerful and so dark, when it's very severe, it can make people feel not only as if they've lost a loving connection, but as if the whole world is devoid of love. So if we wonder how somebody could take 149 people with him when he commits suicide, one answer can be that depression, when it's most severe, can make people feel that life is completely without value, not just for them but for anyone.
Keith AblowThe roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.
Keith AblowMy throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky and you want it, but eventually the need passes, and you feel restored.
Keith AblowMost children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem. When you're three or seven years old, it's less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you're living with a monster.
Keith AblowWe are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed by an alchemy of the soul into addiction, ulcers, strokes, hatred, even war.
Keith AblowFor a psychiatrist to be any good, he has to be willing to corner you, close off the easy exits, even when it hurts. It's supposed to. (46)
Keith Ablow...Some people hurt so much they can't take what they need, even when someone wants to give it to them. (106)
Keith Ablow...the horrific fact that our lives and those of the people we love are impermanent and exquisitely fragile, that any of us can cease to exist without warning, that loving anyone, anywhere, at any time, leaves you infinitely vulnerable at every single moment. (20)
Keith AblowWhen people can do something simple to avoid conflict--say, hit a button or unlock a latch--they'll generally do it.
Keith AblowI figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow.
Keith AblowPlenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.
Keith AblowThe bad things don't seem to happen to bad people.' That's because they already did. There's no original evil left in the world.
Keith AblowWhat about my rights? What about a person's privacy? Did all that just go to hell after 9/11?
Keith Ablow