Keith Ablow Quotes

Most 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.

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.

We 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.

Sometimes when you push someone, you find out who that person really is.

God 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)

Relationships are never chance events.

There's no original evil left in the world. Everyone's just recycling pain. (257)

People blush when one of their core truths is revealed.

The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.

If you take the teachings of Jesus, whether you consider yourself saved or you don't, those teachings are pristine. They're wonderful guides for life. And there's nothing in them that says hurt other people.

Human empathy, while not found on any chart of human anatomy, is the reason we instinctively hurt for our children... it is the reason that one human being's intensely personal tests and triumphs can be harnessed to the good of countless others.

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.

My 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.

The 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.

...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)

...Some people hurt so much they can't take what they need, even when someone wants to give it to them. (106)

Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.

The truth will set you free. Unless you're guilty.

A jealous husband is an ugly thing.

Deep down, everyone wants the truth.

Most 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.

What about my rights? What about a person's privacy? Did all that just go to hell after 9/11?

I think men should be able to veto women's abortions if they're willing to care for the child after it's born.

Because 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.

For 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)

The irrational thoughts were the ones with the power to burn holes in your gut.

But that's the hardest part of healing.' What?' Realizing there's no one to hate.

I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow.

When people can do something simple to avoid conflict--say, hit a button or unlock a latch--they'll generally do it.

The good guys had to operate on a higher level than the killers--just for society to keep track of who was who.

People react predictably, especially when they don't have time to think.

What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?

If you're going to have 19 children, you should supervise them well.