Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch. "

Related Quotes:

" Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim. "

" I have never felt oppressed by women or that feminism is a problem. I do think boys find it hard to like things seen as feminine. I want my son not to feel self-conscious he likes ballet and my daughter to carry on playing Han Solo; that's all. "

" Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with. "

" To make 'depression' synonymous with 'dangerous' is as bad as saying 'Muslim' is synonymous with 'terrorist.' "

" Creative writing lessons can be very useful, just like music lessons can be useful. To say, as Hanif Kureishi did, that 99.9% of students are talentless is cruel and wrong. I believe that certain writers like to believe they arrived into the world with special, unteachable powers because it is good for the ego. "

" I think Father Christmas is real because the belief is real. The belief becomes the reality. "

" I think we get too hung up on categories. Obviously, the book market has to categorise things, and it makes it easier for a reader to go into a bookshop and choose, but as a writer, it helps to get rid of all of that and imagine you are a storyteller around a campfire. "

" Books are our umbilical cord to life. They connect us deeply, and with more meaning, to the world. They aren't about escaping from ourselves but expanding ourselves and finding within us the tools we need to survive. "

" There aren't any fences to the imagination, and so there shouldn't be any for books. "

" How clear can I put this? I am not denying female oppression; I am trying to stop it by calling for a more fluid masculinity. "

" If you can't give children optimism, then what are you doing? "

" You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident. "

" Human brains - in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness - are essentially the same as they were at the time of Shakespeare or Jesus or Cleopatra or the Stone Age. They are not evolving with the pace of change. "

" Being a depressive should not imply danger any more than being a man or even a human should. Mental illness isn't a them/us issue; we are all on the scale somewhere. So we must be very careful to resist ignorance and combat the stigma that leads to dangerous silence. "

" There are two types of friends: actual friends, and the other kind. "

" Beware of the gap: the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it, and you end up falling through. "

" My mum always said I devoured 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe' at the tender age of four, but frankly, I think that might be a touch of maternal exaggeration. "

" Depression is a horrible, potentially life-threatening illness - but the lives it threatens are almost always those of the people who suffer from it. "

" My early novels were written in quite a dark place. I stand by them, but I would never write them again. I think it is subversive to embrace emotional optimism, because it goes against the grain. "

" If you took away all pain, if everyone lived forever, everything would be bland, flat and boring; there would be no reason for art, music, newspapers, love because we would all be in a mono state of happiness. "

" Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers. "

" I suppose the book I really remember loving as a child was one called 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, about a gang of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Sixties Oklahoma. I grew up in the Eighties in Nottinghamshire, but this tale of troubled, but essentially good, kids - or 'greasers' - was something I completely connected with. "

" I'm a firm believer in the connection between the body and the mind: feed one, feed both. I like to run, but only short distances, and fast. I'm no good at long distance. More than six miles, and the knees start to go. "

" I'm not anti-progress, obviously, but I just think progress needs to be a broader thing than just the technology we can create; it's also how we handle it and our level of awareness. "

" Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself. "

" Teenagers watch and listen to all kinds of things. It is the nature of being a teenager to seek out intense stuff. Stuff about death and sex and love and fear. Teenagers are the bravest, most curious, most philosophical, most open-minded readers there are, which is why so many less-than-young adults like writing for them. "

" Neuroscience is a baby science, a mere century old, and our scientific understanding of the brain is nowhere near where we'd like it to be. We know more about the moons of Jupiter than what is inside of our skulls. "

" Boys don't cry. But they do. We do. I do. I weep all the time. "

" I think maths is the root of everything. If we understood every area of math, it would lead to improving our sense of science, physics, engineering, space travel... all those great things. Maths is a backbone for it. "

" Books should be right up there with exercise and diet as something that don't just entertain us but heal us. They tell us we are not alone and fix the pieces of us that can be shattered by reality. They are teachers, and they are friends, and we should never contemplate a world - or a life - without them. "