“An occasional foray into negative emotions makes feeling normal that much sweeter.”

“Empathy is not a state that is accessible to those who are afraid to feel negative emotion.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“We invalidate and desensitize our children when we try to make them feel better instead of helping them to feel like it is valid and ok to feel exactly how they feel. We do an immense disservice when we teach them by doing this to resist their own negative emotions. Anything we resist persists, and so we trap our children in their negative emotions when we try to help them avoid negative emotion by showing them how to run in the direction of positive emotion. We need to validate (mirror) their feelings and allow them to befriend the way they feel entirely before any action is taken to improve a situation or the way they feel.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“A positive pressure produces an attractive gravitational field… Positive pressures are just sort of normal pressures and attractive gravity is normal gravity, so normal pressures produce normal gravity, but it is possible to have negative pressures, and negative pressures produce repulsive gravity, and that's the secret of what makes inflation possible.”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

“Books make me feel safe. Books make me feel normal.”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

“It is impossible to bring more into your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you have. Why? Because the thoughts and feelings you emit as you feel ungrateful are all negative emotions.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

“I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

“The way out of our negative emotions is into our negative emotions. The way out of our illusions is into our illusions. The way out of our suffering is into our suffering.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“It was almost enough to make me feel emotion.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose?”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy