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Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity

Book by Andrew Solomon · 13 quotes · Children, Illness, May

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Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity Quotes

“Though many schizophrenics become curiously attached to their delusions, the fading of the nondelusional world puts them in loneliness beyond all reckoning, a fixed residence on a noxious private planet they can never leave, and where they can receive no visitors.”

WorldLonelinessPlanetsDepressionIllnessMental IllnessFixedDelusionVisitorsFadingReckoningResidence
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“When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes-and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history.”

IfsMadeHeroAcceptedDragonsConformityHeroicStrainNon ConformityPersonal HistoryBeing Accepted
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“Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.”

StatesTogetherDifferencesCompanyMillionsStruggleSawsLonelyMinoritiesAffectedTypicalExceptionalSlim
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“Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children's faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination.”

ChildrenFacesDiesImaginationDealsQualityFantasyParticularDependsExerciseHarderStrongerOur ChildrenStrangerAliensPermanentImmortalityInsultGuaranteesParenthoodNegativityDefiningCatapults
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“I met people on college campuses who were defining themselves as genderqueer to express revolutionary feelings, or to communicate their individuality; they were gender fluid without being gender dysphoric. This phenomenon may be culturally significant, but it has only a little bit in common with the people who feel they can have no authentic self in their birth gender.”

PeopleFeelsMayLittlesSelfFeelingsBitsCommonCollegeBirthMetsLittle BitIndividualityCommunicateGenderSignificantRevolutionaryPhenomenonDefiningFluidCampusAuthentic SelfCollege Campus
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“Sometimes, people end up thankful for what they mourned. You cannot achieve this state by seeking tragedy, but you can keep yourself open more to sorrow's richness than to unmediated despair. Tragedies with happy endings may be sentimental tripe, or they may be the true meaning of love.”

PeopleMayEndsSometimesStatesSufferingGriefAchieveSorrowDespairTragedySeekingSentimentalRichnessHappy EndingsTrue MeaningMeaning Of LoveTripeTrue Meaning Of Love
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“Labeling a child's mind as diseased-whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism-may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone.”

GivingMindMayChildrenHas BeensMightLeftCausesParentIntellectualDisabilityAutismDiscomfortLeft AloneDiseasedLabelingIntellectual Disability
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