When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel Of Obsession

by Irvin D. Yalom

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? —Thus Spake Zarathustra

“My whole life has become a journey, and I begin to feel that my only home, the only familiar place to which I always return, is my illness.”

“I have black periods. Who has not? But they do not have me. They are not of my illness, but of my being. One might say I have the courage to have them.”

but it is not true for me. Despair? No, perhaps once true, but not now. My illness belongs to the domain of my body, but it is not me. I am my illness and my body, but they are not me. Both must be overcome, if not physically, then metaphysically.

I have a why of living and can put up with any how.

No physician has the right to withhold from the patient what is rightfully his.”

that type of duty obliterates a more fundamental duty: each person’s duty to oneself to discover truth.”

Surely, you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.”

“It is not the truth that is holy, but the search for one’s own truth! Can there be a more sacred act than self-inquiry?

my granite sentences is: ‘Become who you are.’ And how can one discover who and what one is without the truth?”

“Dying is hard. I’ve always felt the final reward of the dead is to die no more!”

That the enemies of truth are not lies, but convictions!

“No one ever dies of fatal truths nowadays—there are too many antidotes.”

“What is the seal of liberation?—No longer being ashamed in front of oneself!”

He claims that in order to discover the truth, one must first know oneself fully. And to do that, one must remove oneself from one’s customary point of view, even from one’s own century and country—and then examine oneself from a distance!”

‘Whatever does not kill me, makes me stronger.’ Thus I say again, ‘My illness is a blessing.’”

do not want to be excluded from any part of my internal experience!

Loneliness is a breeding ground for sickness.”

“I have been called many things—philosopher, psychologist, pagan, agitator, antichrist. I have even been called some unflattering things.

that your mission is to save humankind from both nihilism and illusion?”

I have known many who dislike themselves and try to rectify this by first persuading others to think well of them. Once that is done, then they begin to think well of themselves. But this is a false solution, this is submission to the authority of others. Your task is to accept yourself—not to find ways to gain my acceptance.”

he who does not obey himself is ruled by others. It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.”

I stated that there was a basic division of the ways of men: those who wish for peace of soul and happiness must believe and embrace faith, while those who wish to pursue the truth must forsake peace of mind and devote their life to inquiry.

If you kill God, you must also leave the shelter of the temple.”

“Then you conceal your will from yourself. You must now learn to acknowledge your life and to have the courage to say, ‘Thus I chose it!’ The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices!”

“If you choose to be one of those few who partake of the pleasure of growth and the exhilaration of godless freedom, then you must prepare yourself for the greatest pain.

One must have chaos and frenzy within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.’”

Not yet does he understand that there is a my way and a your way, but that there is no “the” way.

I try to teach him that lovers of truth do not fear stormy or dirty water. What we fear is shallow water!

Because, thank God, God is dead—that does not mean existence has no purpose! Because death comes—that does not mean that life has no value.

Here is a man so weighed down with gravity—his culture, his state, his family—as never to have known his own will.

So kneaded into conformity is he that he looks astonished when I speak of choice, as though I were speaking some alien tongue.

He never understood that his duty was to perfect nature, to overcome himself, his culture, family, lust, his brutish animal nature, to become who he was, what he was.

Goethe’s words—‘Be a man and do not follow me—but yourself! But yourself!’

For me, however, godlessness is an occasion for rejoicing. I exalt in my freedom.

you believe you are too fine to experience anger. Josef, a little revenge is a good thing. Swallowed resentment makes one sick!”

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

“perhaps symptoms are messengers of a meaning and will vanish only when their message is comprehended.

“Maybe, Josef, living safely is dangerous. Dangerous and deadly.”

in fact, I hate others who rob me of my solitude and yet do not truly offer me company.” “What

I love a living philosophy! I love a philosophy chiseled out of raw experience.

“I dream of a love in which two people share a passion to search together for some higher truth. Perhaps I should not call it love. Perhaps it’s real name is friendship.”

“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.”

“Yes, eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever.”

“I teach that life should never be modified, or squelched, because of the promise of some other kind of life in the future. What is immortal is this life, this moment. There is no afterlife, no goal toward which this life points, no apocalyptic tribunal or judgment. This moment exists forever, and you, alone, are your only audience.”

“To build children you must first be built yourself. Otherwise, you’ll seek children out of animal needs, or loneliness, or to patch the holes in yourself. Your task as a parent is to produce not another self, another Josef, but something higher. It’s to produce a creator.

“Do not create children until one is ready to be a creator and to spawn creators.”

“Only a duty to become who you are. Become strong: otherwise, you will forever use others for your own enlargement.”

“I thought you decided to marry me fourteen years ago.” “What’s important is that I choose to do it today, Mathilde. And every day.”

Finally, I feel I can say, ‘Yes, I have chosen my life. And chosen well.’”