Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Insomnia creates a constant state of mental alertness, akin to an unending light inside one's mind.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver poignantly describes the unique experience of insomnia, illustrating how it affects the mind by using the metaphor of a refrigerator light that never turns off. This constant illumination symbolizes the relentless stream of thoughts and anxiety that incapacitate restful sleep, allowing readers to empathize with the profound challenge of living with insomnia.
Themes
InsomniaSleepAnxietyMental HealthAlertness
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health awareness campaign, this quote can be used to highlight the struggles faced by those suffering from insomnia.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Similar quotes
Many politicians, celebrities, businessmen and women, and community leaders now are open about their struggles with mental illnesses, something almost unheard of when I began. Together, we are spreading the word that mental health affects all of us and deserves our support and attention.
Rosalynn CarterRead
When you're depressed, there's no calendar. There are no dates, there's no day, there's no night, there's no seconds, there's no minutes, there's nothing. You're just existing in this cold, murky, ever-heavy atmosphere, like they put you inside a vial of mercury.
Rod SteigerRead
Negative thinking patterns can be immensely deceptive and persuasive, and change is rarely easy. But with patience and persistence, I believe that nearly all individuals suffering from depression can improve and experience a sense of joy and self-esteem once again.
David D. BurnsRead
In a typical mental health catch-22, the alienating nature of depression tends to keep its sufferers from finding their way to the very support groups that might help them.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.
Kay Redfield JamisonRead
Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs
M. Scott PeckRead