Norris Health Quotes

My particular brand of anxiety often sought to corrupt the innocence of the everyday into the delinquency of my daydreams.

Sometimes Arthur talked about his childhood. As a boy he was delicate and had never been sent to school. An only son, he lived alone with his widowed mother, whom me adored. Together they studied literature and art; together they visted Paris, Baden-Baden, Rome, moving always in the best society, from Schloss to château, from château to palace, gentle, charming, appreciative; in a state of perpeutal tender anxiety about each other's health.

When I read, I read desperately because I was desperate — desperate to exchange my own anxious thoughts for the calming thoughts of the book’s narrator. I read like that so, for the length of each book, I could be transported out of my body, out of my mind, and into another world — a world where I didn’t have to be me.

I have found therapy to be of limited usefulness, constrained in ways that religion is not, because it consistently falls short of mystery, by which I mean a profound simplicity that allows for paradox and poetry. In therapy I am likely to be searching for explanations, causes, and definitions, information that will help me change my behavior in healthful ways. But wisdom is the goal of spiritual seeking, and it is religion's true home.