Alan Noble > Quotes

“But when we sat down in my office, he told me that the novels we had been reading in class were really weighing on him. Teaching 20th-century literature, I was used to hearing things like this. the world is a bleak place, particularly in 20th-century literature. War, meaninglessness, emptiness, existential dread, absurdity, violence, chaos, nihilistic humor, moral decay - it's a difficult literary period to dwell in for any meaningful length of time; then again, our world is a difficult place to dwell in for any meaningful length of time.”
― Alan Noble

“From what I could see, they had decided to be miserable or depressed or a failure or whatever. And I would think, You know, if they just made better choices, if they were just discipline and stopped making excuses, they wouldn't have to suffer this way.

You can walk around for a long time thinking nonsense like this--that most adults have it together and live safe, pleasant lives, and that the ones who don't only have themselves to blame. It's easy to think like Job's friends.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition

“Human experience inescapably involves suffering. For all of human history we have know this to be true. But it’s hard to recall this truth when we are surrounded by forces that promise us greater and greater explanations, control and strategies of happiness… beauty and love and joy are norma, but so is suffering.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition

“Your suffering does not make you special, it does not make your life more interesting, significant or heroic. It does not make for a better story. It doesn't even make you worthy of love or compassion.”
― Alan Noble

“What brings us comfort in life and death is our belonging to a loving, personal God, who dwells with us, one with whom we have union, one who is able to desire and bring about our good without neglecting His own will. If we belong to anyone else--our passions, a political movement, an ideal, a man or woman--inevitably they will abuse their relation to us by sacrificing our good for their own gain.... Only in Christ can we find belonging without violence or abuse, a belonging that grounds and fulfills our personhood rather than effacing it.”
― Alan Noble

“Sure, life isn't only pain, but it is a lot of pain. And if you don't have an answer to the priest's question when sudden tragedy or prolonged and tedious suffering overwhelm you, it will be too late.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition

“But we have methods for overcoming these obstacles. There's always another technique I can use to fight a corrupt political system, improve my character, and compensate for my biology. So if I'm not living to my full potential, I'm to blame for not taking advantage of these methods.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition

“The deepest dispair occurs when we are unconscious of being in dispair”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“You need to know that your being in the world is a witness, and it "counts for something." Your existence testifies. There is no mitigating this fact. There is nowhere you can hide where your life will not speak something to the world. All we can do sometimes is to decide what our existence is a witness to, what it speaks of, and how we can share the burden of witnessing with one another.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition

“We do a great disservice to one another by overly relying on the technical language of mental health. It ends up demarcating legitimate from illegitimate mental affliction. And if only medically diagnosed mental suffering counts, people will become desperate to find a diagnosis that validates their affliction.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition

“Once I am liberated from all social, moral, natural, and religious values, I become responsible for the meaning of my own life. With no God to judge or justify me, I have to be my own judge and redeemer. This burden manifests as a desperate need to justify our lives through identity crafting and expression”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“The Judge of all has declared his creation - of which you are no small part … - to be good.There is no countermanding that declaration … When we choose to affirm what God has done in creating us, what God I’d already doing in granting us breath and in preserving His world and us in it, we worship Him.”
― Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, Library Edition