I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of friends and loved ones in maintaining mental health over professional help.
Salman Rushdie expresses a personal belief that the support and care of friends and loved ones have been more crucial to his mental well-being than traditional therapy. This perspective highlights the value of personal relationships in managing one's mental health and suggests that emotional connections can play a vital role in survival during challenging times.
In practice
During a speech on mental health awareness, I might quote Rushdie to emphasize the role of personal connections in healing.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.
But maybe, underneath, she loves him too much. Maybe it's her excessive love that pushes him away.
The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
Coming closer to home, there is so much of jealousy, pride, arrogance, and carping criticism; fathers who rise in anger over small, inconsequential things and make wives weep and children fear.
When I meet a woman who attracts me, I prefer women,' she said. 'And when I meet a man who attracts me, I prefer men.' 'You mean you haven't made up your mind yet.' 'I mean exactly what I said. I told you you wouldn't like it. Most people who ask want me definitely on one side or the other.
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