Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy
Irvin D. Yalom
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Whether I will live a long time or a short time, I’m alive now, at this moment. What I want is to know that there are other things to hope for besides length of life. What I want to know is that it isn’t necessary to turn away from thoughts of suffering or death but neither is it necessary to give these thoughts too much time and space. What I want is to be intimate with the knowledge that life is temporary. And then, in the light (or shadow) of that knowledge, to know how to live. How to live now.”
“As Nietzsche said, “If we have our own ‘why’ of life, we shall get along with any ‘how.”
“All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.”
“if it weren’t for errant passion, death, despair, and loss, the great bulk of art would never have been born.”
“What has been given is a new perspective on living life, and what has been taken away is the illusion of limitless life and the belief in a personal specialness exempting us from natural law.”
“My work is to love my body, all of it. Whole and entire. The whole aging mortal troublesome failing miraculous intricate breathing doomed cancerous warm mortifying unreliable hard-working imperfect beautiful appalling living struggling tender frightened frightening living dying living breathing temporary wondrous mystifying afflicted mortally-ill assemblage of the atoms of the universe that is my self, is me, for this space of time.”
“I’m not ready for a committed relationship with anyone and that I have a ton of work to do on myself.”
“All I can do in one session is to be real, to leap into the patient’s life, to offer observations in the hope that he’ll be able to open doors and explore some new parts of himself in his ongoing therapy.”
“sex as the vital antagonist to death—isn’t the orgasm the primal spark of life? I know of many instances in which sexual feelings arise in order to neutralize fears of death.”
“I’m looking for me in you, that my hollowness makes it impossible to identify my needs and my desires,”
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