Stephen Grosz quotes:

Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.

Being present, whether with children, with friends, or even with oneself, is hard work. But isn't this attentiveness - the feeling that someone is trying to think about us - something we want more than praise?

When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us-we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand.

For a minute, the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately, this fear saved her from feeling alone.

As he spoke, I had the mental image of a small boy switching on the nightlight, not because he wants to be able to find his parents during the night, but because he fears his parents will forget him - lose him - in the dark.

The bigger the front, the bigger the back.

I want to change, but not if it means changing.

It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.

Psychoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we're going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we're creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present.