Quotes by Irvin D. Yalom

I hate it that she has so insinuated herself into the interstices of my mind that I can never root her out. And most of all, I hate that at the end of my life I feel compelled to ask, Howd I do, Mama?.

The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines.

To the extent that one is responsible for ones life, one is alone.

Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until ones midlife crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone. This comforting illusion may be shattered by some urgent irreversible experience ... None more potently confronts us with finiteness and contingency than the imminence of our own death.

Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.

Someones got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, who does he go see?

Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. Im still learning.

Were not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.

The amount of death terror experienced is closely related to the amount of life unlived.

Im a compulsive reader of fiction. I fell in love with novels when I was a teenager. My wife Marilyn and I... our initial friendship began because we are both readers. Ive gone to sleep almost every night of my life after having read in a novel for 30 or 40 minutes. Im a great reader of fiction and much less so of non-fiction.

I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy - I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection.

“Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.”

“I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.”

“Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.”