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Creativity Quote by Michael Schenker

"Even when I was very depressed, I could hold on to something. It seems that I have always had that streak of gold that I could hold on to"

About this Quote

Depression is usually narrated as total eclipse; Michael Schenker frames it as a blackout with a single filament still burning. That "streak of gold" is a musician's metaphor, but it also reads like a survival tactic: not optimism, not denial, just one workable handle on reality when everything else slips. The line lands because it refuses the tidy arc of redemption. He doesn't claim he was cured by grit or grace. He claims he could hold on.

Subtextually, Schenker is defending the legitimacy of fragile hope. "Something" is deliberately unspecific, the way lifelines often are in the moment: a riff, a person, a next gig, a memory of competence. By keeping it vague, he makes the mechanism portable, accessible to anyone who's had to bargain with their own mind one hour at a time. The "always" matters too. He's not describing a mood swing; he's describing an identity thread, a private continuity that predates the crash. That can be read as resilience, but also as artistry: a belief that there is a core self separate from the fog.

Context helps. Schenker's career is marked by volatility, exits, returns, and the intense pressure-cooker dynamics of rock culture, where genius is romanticized and damage is often normalized. Against that backdrop, "gold" isn't glamor; it's a small, stubborn value he assigns to himself even when the scene (or his own chemistry) might not. The quote works because it makes endurance feel less like a slogan and more like a grip.

Quote Details

TopicResilience
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Schenker, Michael. (2026, January 17). Even when I was very depressed, I could hold on to something. It seems that I have always had that streak of gold that I could hold on to. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/even-when-i-was-very-depressed-i-could-hold-on-to-80136/

Chicago Style
Schenker, Michael. "Even when I was very depressed, I could hold on to something. It seems that I have always had that streak of gold that I could hold on to." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/even-when-i-was-very-depressed-i-could-hold-on-to-80136/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Even when I was very depressed, I could hold on to something. It seems that I have always had that streak of gold that I could hold on to." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/even-when-i-was-very-depressed-i-could-hold-on-to-80136/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2026.

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Michael Schenker quote on a streak of gold
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About the Author

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Michael Schenker (born January 10, 1955) is a Musician from Germany.

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