“I did not want to sit on the roof, though I was also aware that if I didn’t allow myself the relief of considering suicide, I would soon explode from within and commit suicide. I felt the fatal tentacles of this despair wrapping themselves around my arms and legs. Soon they would hold the fingers I would need to take the right pills or to pull the trigger, and when I had died, they would be the only motion left. I knew that the voice of reason (“For heaven’s sake, just go downstairs!”) was the voice of reason, but I also knew that by reason I would deny all the poison within me, and I felt already some strange despairing ecstasy at the thought of the end. If only I had been disposable like yesterday’s paper! I would have thrown myself away so quietly then and been glad of the absence, glad in the grave if that was the only place that could allow some gladness.”

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About Andrew Solomon

American writer on politics, culture and psychology

Andrew Solomon is an American writer on politics, culture and psychology. He has 93 quotes on the site and has written widely across major magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, and Travel and Leisure. His work ranges across subjects such as depression, Soviet artists, the cultural rebirth of Afghanistan, Libyan politics, and deaf culture. That breadth gives his writing a distinctly public and reflective character, moving between personal and political life, culture, and mental health.

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Books by Andrew Solomon

The Noonday Demon

2001

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Far From the Tree

2012

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