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" Those weeks before diagnosis can be among the most torturous times. There is a reason you're called a patient once the plastic bracelet goes on. "
David Rakoff
Before
Patient
Plastic
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" Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Well, of course not Adam and Steve. Never Adam and Steve. It's Adam and Steven. "
David Rakoff
Adam And Eve
Never
Course
" There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness. "
David Rakoff
Sadness
Reassuring
Nothing
" I do tend to be an anxious fellow, and I do tend to see the world as a little darker than perhaps it genuinely is, but I also do appreciate much more than a rosy scenario, I appreciate straight news. I appreciate honesty. "
David Rakoff
World
Appreciate
Honesty
" When people give you a writing assignment, they're asking what you think. That's the very opposite of being an actor. When you're an actor, no one wants to hear what you think. "
David Rakoff
Think
Writing
People
" Pessimists are born, true, but they also can be made. "
David Rakoff
Also
Born
Made
" Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped. "
David Rakoff
Everybody
Wired
Switch
" Central to living a life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact, regardless of whether we kiss or we wound. "
David Rakoff
Living
Kiss
Good
" I have let half-decades elapse between books because books have to be writte and writing is awful, but if you are the type of person who makes things, there is no profit in worrying about how or why or when the next project will come into being beyond simply acknowledging that it is inevitable that it will be very soon. "
David Rakoff
Person
Why
Writing
" I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won't lie about that. "
David Rakoff
Lie
Find
Done
" My salvation lies in time spent alone with an X-Acto knife and commercial-grade adhesive. "
David Rakoff
Salvation
Time
Alone
" I can see a great beauty in acknowledging the fact that the world is dark. "
David Rakoff
I Can
Beauty
Dark
" There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking. "
David Rakoff
Thinking
Optimism
Nothing
" It's rare that I'm not at work on some sort of craft project. I've often enthused about the need to make things; how it employs a unique set of muscles - physical, intellectual, spiritual - that I can attain a state of flow when making something that I almost never can when writing. "
David Rakoff
Spiritual
Writing
Work
" Before I sat down and became a writer, before I began to do it habitually and for my living, there was a decades-long stretch when I was terrified that it would suck, so I didn't write. I think that marks a lot of people, a real terror at being bad at something, and unfortunately, you are always bad before you can get a little better. "
David Rakoff
Living
Bad
You
" Deprived of the opportunity to judge one another by the cars we drive, New Yorkers, thrown together daily on mass transit, form silent opinions based on our choices of subway reading. Just by glimpsing the cover staring back at us, we can reach the pinnacle of carnal desire or the depths of hatred. Soul mate or mortal enemy. "
David Rakoff
Daily
Opportunity
Reading
" I am the world's worst reporter. I am apt to try too hard to help rather than just document my subjects. "
David Rakoff
World
Try
Worst
" It's the false moral component behind blind animal love that so frosts me. The faulty logic that believes that the capacity to adore a nonhuman creature is somehow a purer form of love. "
David Rakoff
Me
Moral
Blind
" I'm anti-religious. I don't like people telling me what to do. "
David Rakoff
Telling
Like
Me
" Unless one is planning to go shopping - basically begging to be smothered by the ravening throngs of returners and bargain hunters; an embrace as constricting as that hugging machine designed by autistic author Temple Grandin - then Boxing Day feels like a bar after last call when the lights have been turned up. "
David Rakoff
Day
Shopping
Planning
" If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories. "
David Rakoff
Moment
Memories
You
" A secondhand wardrobe hand clothes doesn't make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, or HIV. I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay doesn't make one witty... the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. "
David Rakoff
Parents
Hate
Art
" About the only thing that I have - or had, because it's failing me lately - is my memory. I had a really good memory. I was always terribly protective of that fact. "
David Rakoff
Me
Memory
Always
" I will forever be grateful to my oncologist for opening the door and saying, 'Damn it, the tumor's 10 percent bigger,' before he even said hello. "
David Rakoff
Saying
Opening
Grateful
" I do not go outdoors... As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach. "
David Rakoff
New York
City
Outdoors
" I cannot escape the feeling that I was, at best, a cancer tourist, that my survival means I dabbled. "
David Rakoff
Survival
Escape
Cancer
" I have no problem with animals, I just like people more. "
David Rakoff
More
Animals
Like
" I had a beautiful childhood and a lovely childhood. I just didn't like being a child. I didn't like the rank injustice of not being listened to. I didn't like the lack of autonomy. "
David Rakoff
Injustice
Childhood
Child
" The rigors of creativity - the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude - do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn't for everyone. "
David Rakoff
Everyone
Creativity
Kind
" I value kindness in myself and others. I try to remain super-vigilant about my targets and make extra sure that my sometimes barbed comments are deserved and in response to genuine malefaction. "
David Rakoff
Sometimes
Myself
Kindness
" I'm not sure. But that bless-his/her-heart kind of melancholic humor is among my favorite things in the world. I guess it exposes a kind of humanity - or that's the hope, at least - a kind of grudging respect for human frailty. Unless it's actually kicking human frailty while it's down - I'm not sure. "
David Rakoff
Respect
Humanity
World