Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sadness is temporary and can be overcome, while depression is a more serious, long-lasting condition.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver compares sadness to a head cold, suggesting that it is a common and temporary emotional state that can be resolved with time and self-care. In contrast, she likens depression to cancer, highlighting its complexity, severity, and the need for deeper understanding and treatment, thereby emphasizing the importance of recognizing the difference between fleeting sadness and a serious mental health condition.
Themes
SadnessDepressionMental HealthEmotionsResilience
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health awareness seminar.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes βI'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.
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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.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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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
It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Similar quotes
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
... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.
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People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of.
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It can be difficult for people to talk about it, because there still is that stigma around mental illness. But I would encourage people to do that, because they'll be surprised once they do 'come out' how many other people have had similar experiences.
Matt HaigRead
Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
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