David Sheff Quotes

#1. I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.

David Sheff

#2. At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them.

David Sheff

#3. An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.

David Sheff

#4. We deny the severity of our loved one's problem not because we are naive, but because we can't know.

David Sheff

#5. Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything ... I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate ... It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs ...

David Sheff

#6. I don't mind ratings boards. As a viewer, you have the right not to see a film.

Takashi Miike

#7. This stigma associated with drug use
the belief that bad kids use, good kids don't, and those with full-blown addiction are weak, dissolute, and pathetic
has contributed to the escalation of use and has hampered treatment more than any single other factor.

David Sheff

#8. Here's a note to the parents of addicted children: Choose your music carefully ... There are millions of treacherous moments.

David Sheff

#9. The hopeful part about that is when you do have that help, you will feel better. It still doesn't make this easy. Nothing makes this easy, but you can make better decisions.

David Sheff

#10. But here's the rub of addiction. By its nature, people afflicted are unable to do what, from the outside, appears to be a simple solution - don't drink. Don't use drugs. In exchange for that one small sacrifice, you will be given a gift that other terminally ill people would give anything for: life.

David Sheff

#11. How innocent we are of our mistakes and how we responsible we are for them.

David Sheff

#12. The only reason baseball's numerical touchstones have any significance is that most players - even the game's greats - peter out just barely before they reach them.

Stephen Rodrick

#13. I know there is no point in haranguing him because he will just shut down, but I want to cover every angle.

David Sheff

#14. It's our responsibility to be the best that we can.

Debasish Mridha

#15. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed
right to grow old.

Haruki Murakami

#16. This is the way that misery does love company: People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague [drugs]
an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families.

David Sheff

#17. Most people could not pronounce Nintendo and were not interested in learning how.

David Sheff

#18. Openness is the first step toward recovery ... addiction remains a secret because of the overwhelming shame associated with it.

David Sheff

#19. A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.

David Sheff

#20. When I transformed my random and raw words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, a semblance of order and sanity appeared where there had been only chaos and insanity.

David Sheff

#21. Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.

Henri Frederic Amiel

#22. I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it.

David Sheff

#23. How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

David Sheff

#24. I learned that the purpose of the Twelve Steps is to do the will of God.

Keith Miller

#25. Wherever you be, wherever you may, seek the truth, strive for the beautiful, achieve the good.

David Sheff

#26. If life is like a canoe in a raging river then wisdom is the paddle to successfully navigate.

Orrin Woodward

#27. That's when it struck me that I can't take my life as long as I can still laugh.

David Sheff

#28. In the ardor of pursuit men soon forget the goal from which they start.

Friedrich Schiller

#29. Jasper, who is six, is the only one of us who responds appropriately. He wails, inconsolable for an hour.

David Sheff

#30. Why does it help to read others' stories? It is not only that misery loves company, because (I learned) misery is too self-absorbed to want much company. Others' experiences did help with my emotional struggle ...

David Sheff

#31. Sometimes I am all right. Is this what they call letting go? I have let go, if letting go means I am all right sometimes.

David Sheff

#32. Gunpei Yokoi, asked his boss, 'What should I make?' Nintendo chief executive Hiroshi Yamauchi replied, 'Something great.'
Game Over Nintendo's Battle to Dominate Videogames

David Sheff

#33. Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.

David Sheff

#34. It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.

Terry Pratchett

#35. It seems that our politicians see the world in black and white, so why not our artists? Did Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' have to be in black and white? No. But is it fantastic that it was? To see New York like that? Yes!

Alexander Payne

#36. Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying

David Sheff

#37. I am becoming used to an overwhelming, grinding mixture of anger and worry ...

David Sheff

#38. It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. You have just enough time to do God's will. If you can't get it all done, it means you're trying to do more than God intended for you to do.

Rick Warren