I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand.
Sebastian FaulksRead
Depression - that limp word for the storm of black panic and half-demented malfunction - had over the years worked itself out in Charlotte's life in a curious pattern. Its onset was often imperceptible: like an assiduous housekeeper locking up a rambling mansion, it noiselessly went about and turned off, one by one, the mind's thousand small accesses to pleasure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote describes how depression subtly invades one's life, quietly taking away sources of joy.
In this quote, Sebastian Faulks explores the insidious nature of depression, likening it to a meticulous housekeeper who systematically closes off access to the joys of life. He illustrates how depression can creep in almost unnoticed, gradually smothering the small pleasures that contribute to a person's overall happiness, creating a sense of panic and disarray in one's mental state as it becomes harder to engage with the world positively.
Themes
DepressionMental HealthPleasureHappinessLife Struggle
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health awareness campaign, this quote could be used to illustrate the covert nature of depression.
More from Sebastian Faulks
All quotes →If I hadn't read all of Jane Austen and DH Lawrence, Tolstoy and Proust, as well as the more fun stuff, I wouldn't know how to break bad news, how to sympathise, how to be a friend or a lover, because I wouldn't have any idea what was going on in anybody else's mind.
Sebastian FaulksRead
A romantic is someone who believes that something is valuable even if it doesn't last. And a non-romantic is someone who says that if something doesn't endure, or can't be logically proved and pinned down, it's worthless.
Sebastian FaulksRead
From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else’s. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on her ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else’s, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.
Sebastian FaulksRead
People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all.
Sebastian FaulksRead
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