Every Person's Life Is Worth a Novel Quotes

“it is nevertheless worth noticing that there is a future to which we may look ahead. But whether we look or not, it will come, it will come!”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel

“what matters most is what is happening, with whom it is happening, how it is happening, when it is happening, how one feels about what is happening, and especially, what are the consequences of what is happening.”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel

“though you can’t actually run away from yourself, if you are to change you must transcend this ever present background, the influences of which have already affected your state of mind.”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel

“The therapist, on the other hand, is commissioned to generate happy endings. This is made difficult by the complicated fact that while the therapist must try to save his patient from tragedy, he must also know the tragic factors in life and face them unflinchingly.”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel

“a sense, what is happy about a happy ending is that it says things will go on. Tragedy is the opposite. It ruptures continuity. The tragic event seems to bring the curtain down inexorably. That is perhaps tragedy’s definitive condition.”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel

“tragedy is partly a matter of where a story ends.”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel

“An acceptable proportion must be maintained whether in a novel, therapy or everyday life — between pain and other aspects of living. Humor, irony, diversity of interests, a sense of adventure, mystery, love — all are story elements passed over by those people who are most imprisoned within their pain. Such persons can be only temporarily interesting, either in a novel or in life itself.”
― Erving Polster, Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel