Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Michael Vito Tosto

Quote by Michael Vito Tosto

“I sometimes think the entire human species is just a fucked-up tapestry woven out of little particles of prolonged sadness, living next to one another in sustained dissonance, reacting to each other and to the bitter truths of the Universe, replicating themselves and their sorrow on and on and on, with no end in sight save for the virus that finally wipes us and our grotesque dysfunction from the surface of the planet once and for all.”

Quote by Michael Vito Tosto

Book:Elsewhere and Otherwise: Essays
Create image

Work

Elsewhere and Otherwise: Essays

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Michael Vito Tosto

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Michael Vito Tosto. more

You May Also Like

“Splendora cried, often times, bout things and people for no reason anybody else could see. Her nerves, or her brain, seem to "feel" things bout everything round her. Sensitive, I blive they call it, cordin to the new words I learn from my lame son who paints. She "sensed" things. Thought most everybody was sad. We laughed at her then, but as I grow older I begin to think she is right. She said even things like curtains, trees, some animals, looked sad to her. I looked this word up with my son, vulnerable. That's what she thought. People, too, even when they be laughin, she said.”

FeelingsSadnessVulnerabilitySensitivity
Book:The Matter Is Life
Create image

“If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”

SadnessWintering
Book:Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Create image

“If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt. We seem to be living in an age when we’re bombarded with entreaties to be happy, but we’re suffering from an avalanche of depression. We’re urged to stop sweating the small stuff, yet we’re chronically anxious. I often wonder if these are just normal feelings that become monstrous when they’re denied. A great deal of life will always suck. There will be moments when we’re riding high and moments when we can’t bear to get out of bed. Both are normal. Both in fact require a little perspective.”

SadnessDepressionWintering
Book:Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Create image