Andrew Solomon
Andrew Solomon
Andrew Solomonis a writer on politics, culture and psychology, who lives in New York and London. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Travel and Leisure, and other publications on a range of subjects, including depression, Soviet artists, the cultural rebirth of Afghanistan, Libyan politics, and Deaf politics. His book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was included in...
ProfessionWriter
thinking believer huge
I'm a huge believer in science. But I don't think it explains everything.
beautiful believe men
I have a very difficult time believing that there is some being who is going to invite me into heaven or not on the basis of whether I wear a yarmulke or whether I have been sprinkled with water while someone said something. Some of the ritual is very beautiful, but I find it difficult to believe that it really has to do with God. I believe that dogma comes from man.
brain had-enough looks
I'm sure that if we had enough sophistication, someone could look at what my changes in brain structure were as I came to feel more deeply in love.
light suffering matter
I feel, as a matter nearly of faith, that if you have known a certain amount of suffering and have emerged out of it into the light, you are obliged to share that light with as many of the still-beleaguered as possible.
gay people stories
The more gay people can tell our stories, the more other people will accept gay people.
community target way
Any community that remains an abstraction is an easy target for prejudice and cruelty, but any community that becomes fully humanized is much harder to treat in that way.
people political young
A lot of people are very political when they are young, and then they outgrow it.
despair mysterious stills
Science still won't explain the mysterious nature of love and despair.
school years names
I went through elementary school being bullied and teased. I remember someone - I can't recall his name, but I can see his face - who decided on the school bus, when I was ten or eleven, to call me "Percy." That was somehow supposed to connect to the fact that I wasn't very athletic. I was, in fact, also not very coordinated. I was not very masculine, by the standards of ten-year-olds. I remember being on the school bus and everyone chanting, "Percy! Percy! Percy!" at me.
mother brother parent
My parents deeply and truly loved each other, and if my mother hadn't died they would have been together forever. They were together for as much of forever as was given to them. They really loved my brother and me and were very good to us. It gave the model of how to have a happy marriage and family, but it also set the bar very high.
despair
Despair is part of love.
loss would-be different
If your love didn't always contain the possibility of loss, it would be very different from human love as we know it.
ideas soul language
The experience of being depressed and emerging from depression made me understand the idea of a soul. I felt that the language in which one could best acknowledge that drew from faith.
believe soul levels
I believe very deeply that this beauty I call the soul is not a random occurrence. I don't know what its meaning is at some larger level, but I know that it has meaning.