Cory Richards > Quotes

“If someone thinks you’re a fucking problem, an addict, a fuck-up, and broken, they’re going to treat you differently despite all their best intentions otherwise, which can foster a slow, steady reduction, stripping away confidence
and self-love until it all becomes a repeated, entrenched story. The irony is that this contraction often occurs in the care of those
who are genuinely trying to help.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“It’s a worn-out cliché that the first step is admitting you have a problem, and it’s true for most that in order to break an addiction you must see the problem clearly. You have to see the mountain that needs to be climbed. Tragically, for many it’s seemingly unclimbable. Admitting you have a problem means nothing but compounding shame and guilt unless you’re willing to climb. It will be steep and hard and exhausting and you’ll likely fall and end up in a heap. Maybe you’ll get hit by an avalanche.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Some new research tells us that imagining a feeling of happiness, especially during meditation, starts to shape our lives toward it despite no external factors changing at all. The pretty people in Venice, California, call this “manifestation,” but ironically, it usually isn’t about genuine contentment with what is but rather is focused on what we want. The Buddhists, Taoists, and Stoics have been quietly asserting for a couple of thousand years that lasting happiness is about presence as much as it is about where you end up.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows. —Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Blame is useless amidst madness.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Psychology is an invitation out of victimhood, not into it.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“If everything is the same thing, then does anything matter?” I insist. He caps his pen, pauses, and finally says, “Well, I suppose it’s the way it’s all arranged that gives it meaning . . . it’s how it’s put together. But then again, in the grand scheme of things . . . no, it probably doesn’t matter in the way we think it does.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“For me, the accomplishment and celebration seem to be centered around something else. Suddenly my weaknesses are being celebrated as my strengths and I wonder if Achilles might have lived forever if he’d taken more care of his heel.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Only the summit can illuminate its own insignificance.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs. —Robin Williams”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“All words are borrowed. The beauty of writing is how they flow through us and arrange themselves as something new but familiar. We can be unique and belong at the same time. In moments of confusion, anger, and sadness, words lend comfort, letting us know that someone else has navigated the same tempestuous tides and survived.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“That my life can look so perfect from the exterior and feel so chaotic within seeds a deep sense of guilt, as though by living at all, I’m doing something wrong.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Maybe my art comes from the confusion that something as beautiful as life can hurt so much one day and fill me with joy the next. Maybe the bipolar temperament’s ability to touch those extremes is where the link lies, outside of science and explanation.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“In the bible, everyone comes from a fucked up family.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“I am the snow collapsing on itself and I feel myself breaking into a thousand pieces. Maybe a picture can hold them together. The world is small around me as I kneel in the snow on the edge of my own death and cry tears of shock, pain, and relief.”
― Cory Richards

“We don’t need a reason to fight because the fight itself has become the reason. In that way, getting the shit kicked out of me is just another means to feel cared for. The fight is the shortcut to the attention we crave as we seesaw back and forth between violence and victim, using both sides to claw for love. How it got this way is anyone’s guess. Blame is useless amidst madness. But it’s clear to me that I co-author this chaos.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“History is full of fraternal chaos: Romulus and Remus, Thor and Loki, Cain and Abel. It’s as if brothers are mythologically destined to clash.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“In relationships, secrets are termites that feast on intimacy, self-value, and trust until the raw material of love loses its structure and disintegrates. Whatever Liv and I shared was eroded by dishonesty until it collapsed on itself. That I’d known it would never last was the biggest lie and perhaps even a subconscious motivation to destroy it. It wasn’t calculated, but all the secrets I carried made it impossible for me to love and be loved. I made many mistakes and now I’m looking across the delta at the landscape destruction built. If we get honest, the wreckage of secrets can guide us toward safe harbor if we’re brave enough to stare into ourselves and understand what we hide and why. The secrets we keep are the pieces of ourselves we deem unlovable. But when we embrace them, they lose their potency and no longer hold power over us, releasing us downstream, and I think I know why Steve is always looking that way. Downstream is the future, and if we choose honesty, the future is always hopeful. We’re never outside the reach of rebuilding and forgiving the mistakes we’ve made upstream. It’s frightening work but worth every mile we travel. With enough time and courage, the mistakes of our past become the unshakable bedrock of a better future.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“After all, family dynamics aren’t independent clusters of choice and consequence, but rather a tapestry of intricately woven threads of action and reaction, passing over and under each other, knotting together time, emotion, and experience as one.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“The danger of the story of the mad genius often ends in people not seeking help because they believe it will diminish their creativity. But it’s important to ask these questions: Is creation amidst destruction more valuable than life? Can balance and genius coexist, or are art and balance mutually exclusive?”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“The words that really matter in the wake of passing are the stories we tell of our loved ones. Stories fill up the space they leave behind and we can see their faces and hear their laugh and reach into something shapeless and touch them. So long as we tell stories, they can never really die.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“What we think of someone affects how we treat them, and they shape themselves into that image through osmosis.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“To observers, neurodivergent minds appear extreme and irrational, with a penchant for catastrophe and drama. It’s what we know. People with coping mechanisms like drugs and alcohol love a good calamity because it reinforces our stories and worldview. Those stories give us an excuse to indulge. But even in the healthiest brains, most of our reactions and responses can be boiled down to a few core beliefs about ourselves.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Eventually I’ll learn all the words and articulate the experience of trauma to others. But I won’t accept it for myself even as I rip laptops in half and patch the drywall and forget whom I’m calling. At the same time, I’ll hide behind it and abuse it, and it will become its own mask and justification and rationalization. For a time, trauma will become my identity. It will be true and false at the same time. I will use it to manipulate and escape responsibility even as I help bring it to public consciousness and validate it. When it becomes a buzzword, I’ll see that I’ve been as much a part of the problem as of the solution. The point is not to rob people of their own experience but to be mindful that we don’t abuse the diagnosis and dilute it. PTSD is never an excuse. It just helps us understand behavior.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded. —Jess Lair”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“From above, tiny pale termite nests pepper the islands like scattered ash. From ground level, the termitaria rise as high as 17 feet and look like mud candles. Steve tells me that termites are the “architects of the Okavango” because their colonies are responsible for the 150,000 islands that make up the ecosystem. As a nest grows, sediment brought by the floods collects around it, making it bigger with every season. Eventually it becomes a small island. And because the mound provides a high perch for birds and mammals alike, they sit on top and drop seeds in their excrement. The seeds find purchase and roots stretch out under the soil and catch more sand from the floods and the islands keep growing. But before they build, termites destroy. They feed on wood and grass and break down other life until it collapses from the inside out. I wonder how many living things have been devoured to make the islands grow.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“The language of happiness has evolved over time. In Middle English it was hap, which is the fortune that life offers up, both good and bad. Hap is unforeseen circumstances that unfold from the mystery. It’s our lot. Moments of joy are found when we step into the arena with that fate. Knowing that these moments will come and go alongside blistering pain, loss, and heartache, and accepting that and choosing again and again to get knocked down and covered in dust—that is where what we call happiness lives. That hap has become happiness is part of the problem we are trying to solve.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“At some point every generation is lost. We must be. How else can we find ourselves?”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“The word has shapeshifted again and I feel far away from the mountain, where things were less noisy, less frantic, more basic, and more meaningful. Where coffee tastes better because it is the end and not the means.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“Simply put, in some ways, emotional processing begins in the heart and is sustained by a conversation with the brain. How the heart informs and might even be foundational in consciousness is the next frontier. Neurobiology seems to be proving what our ancestors always knew: The heart itself is the heart of the matter.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within