― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“Being present, whether with children, with friends, or even with oneself, is hard work. But isn't this attentiveness -- the feeling that someone is trying to think about us -- something we want more than praise?”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“In trying so hard to be different from our parents, we're actually doing much the same thing -- doling out empty praise the way an earlier generation doled out thoughtless criticism. If we do it to avoid thinking about our child and her world, then praise, just like criticism, is ultimately expressing our indifference.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“As he spoke, I had the mental image of a small boy switching on the nightlight, not because he wants to be able to find his parents during the night, but because he fears his parents will forget him - lose him - in the dark.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“For a minute, the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately, this fear saved her from feeling alone.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“i knew tht we all have the capacity to act in self-destructive ways, nevertheless i had a kind of faith that the desire to live was more powerful. now, instead, i felt its fragility. peter's suicide made me feel that the battle between the forces of life and death was far more evenly pitched.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
“He seemed never to have acquired a skill that we all need: the ability to make another person worry about us.”
― Stephen Grosz
“my breakdown was like a furnace and what was burned away was any belief in my own feelings”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
