Judith Guest Quotes

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.

And if you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.

Make notes—I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.

Always good to have one crazy in the family ... It takes the pressure off everybody else.

You have to live your life according to what comforts you, not what the rest of your family thinks you ought to be doing.

Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.

And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability.

Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.

Writers don't write to inform other people, they write to find out something themselves.

Make peace with what is.

Autonomy is the whole thing; it's what unhappy people are missing. They have given the power to run their lives to other people.

. . . crazy world or maybe it's just the view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture.

To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have some kind of guiding principle. A belief of some kind

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.

Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.

Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.

Some people have an unrealistic expectation when it comes to getting published; the fact is most publishers will turn down your work which is why you need to be persistent.

The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.

Two separate, distinct personalities, not separate at all, but inextricably bound, soul and body and mind, to each other, how did we get so far apart so fast?

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and Im enjoying it.

It's always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that's the person I'm going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it's there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain't me.

Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up.

People that keep stiff upper lips find that it's hard to smile.

It's true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it.