“I had carried on when all I wanted was to be dead. I had stayed alive for other people. I never stayed alive for myself. I cannot begin to describe the intensity of that effort.”
Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression
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Sally Brampton 5
British writer 1955–2016Related quotes
“I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon but i want to STAY ALIVE.”
“If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.”
This first appears in the Isaac Newton : A Biography (1934), citing unpublished papers by John Conduitt reporting an anecdote of an occassion where Conduitt asked Newton where he obtained the tools to make his reflecting telescope. Newton is said to have laughed and replied, "If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me I had never made anything of it."
Disputed
"Motto"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
Variant: My motto,
As I live and learn,
is:
Dig And Be Dug
In Return.
“I prefer to stay alive and be criticized than be sympathized.”
Fallaci interview (1973)
“I am as much or as little accomplice to my staying alive as I was to my birth.”
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
Context: I am still here, although I don’t know why; accidentally, I guess, as I was born; I am as much or as little accomplice to my staying alive as I was to my birth.
Source: From an interview with VIBE, " Caught Up http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hSYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22It+can+never+be+bad+to+have+a+foundation+as+a+man%22+usher&source=bl&ots=znEcU5UzFB&sig=nSA9TRsN-0VmlAwizQ_1eicZRP0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ow81T8e2JOet0QWamd2xAg&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22It%20can%20never%20be%20bad%20to%20have%20a%20foundation%20as%20a%20man%22%20usher&f=false" (July 2008), p. 65-71.