Great Yalom Quotes & Sayings

I'm 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. I've gone to sleep almost every night of my life after having read in a novel for 30 or 40 minutes. I'm a great reader of fiction and much less so of non-fiction. — Irvin D. Yalom

I always wanted to be a writer. Maybe, had I been brought up in another generation, I might have just gone into writing rather than medicine - which is not to say that I didn't also have a great attraction towards the idea of being a healer. Fortunately, I've been able to combine the two in ways I could never possibly have imagined. — Irvin D. Yalom

I have a lot of blurring between fiction and non-fiction in so many of my works. For example, my first novel, 'When Nietzsche Wept,' has a great deal of non-fiction in it. I didn't create many characters at all. Almost all of them are historical characters that actually existed. — Irvin D. Yalom

Surely this sense of betrayal is what Robert Frost had in mind when he wrote: "Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me." io — Irvin D. Yalom

One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety. — Irvin D. Yalom

Exactly. We know that the great Goethe carried a copy of Spinoza's Ethics in his pocket for a year. Imagine that - an entire year! And not only Goethe but many other great Germans. Lessing and Heine reported a clarity and calmness that came from reading this book. Who knows, there may come a time in your life when you, too, will need the calmness and clarity that Spinoza's Ethics offers. I shan't ask you to read that book now. You're too young to grasp its meaning. But I want you to promise that before your twenty-first birthday you will read it. Or perhaps I should say, read it by the time you're fully grown. Do I have your word as a good German? — Irvin D. Yalom

It's no great mystery. If no one will listen, it's only natural to shout! — Irvin D. Yalom

If it weren't for errant passion, death, despair, and loss, the great bulk of art would never have been born. — Irvin D. Yalom