Is there any passage of writing that always cheers you up when you feel depressed? A paragraph/ chapter/ passage or even a single sentence/ line that is guaranteed to make you feel like life is worth living again?
Here are some of mine:
- The speech scene in PG Wodehouse's Right Ho Jeeves
- The New Year's Eve party in On the Road
- Almost anything by the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor
- Oscar Wilde describing what he is looking forward to when he is released from prison in De Profundis
- Roald Dahl's description of the discovery of buried treasure in The Mildenhall Treasure
- George Orwell's description of pre-war England in Coming Up For Air and also his essay The Common Toad
It could be anything – popular science writing, essays, newspaper articles you have cut out, poetry, novels, short stories...something joyful and life-affirming for when you are depressed (maybe something you read out loud?). It would be great if you could quote it in full.