When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel Of Obsession

by Irvin D. Yalom

taste of my death in my mouth gave me perspective and courage.

“Integration of the unconscious.”

I think meditation and journaling can help with such integration

You must choose between comfort and true inquiry!

No, the problem is not discomfort. The problem is that you have discomfort about the wrong thing!”

cosmic perspective always attenuates tragedy. If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.”

All along he has insisted that growth is more important than comfort.

“Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated

one’s life! If one does not live in the right time, then one can never die at the right time.” “What does

Have I taught him “freedom from” without teaching “freedom for”? No, a guide must be a railing by the torrent,

You have a burden: the richer the soil, the more unforgivable the failure to cultivate it.”

meant only that, to fully relate to another, one must first relate to oneself. If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation. Only when one can live like the eagle—with no audience whatsoever—can one turn to another in love; only then is one able to care about the

with the real enemy—time, aging, death—then I came to realize that Mathilde is neither adversary nor rescuer, but simply a fellow traveler trudging through the cycle of life. Somehow that simple

“It’s strange, but at the very moment when I, for the first time in my life, reveal my loneliness in all its depth, in all its despair—at that precise moment, loneliness melts away! The

“You yourself taught me that we are each composed of many parts, each clamoring for expression. We can be held responsible only for the final compromise, not for the wayward impulses of each of the parts. Your

two people join together to attain some higher ideal. And here, now, it has arrived! You and I have joined together precisely in such a way! We’ve participated in the other’s self overcoming. I am your friend. You are mine. We