Neurotic Quotes - Page 14

• I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.

  Anne Lamott

  Thinking, People, Dull

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.190, Anchor

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• As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe.

  Libba Bray

  Stars, Kids, Dark

  Libba Bray (2009). “Going Bovine”, p.257, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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• The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.

  Frantz Fanon

  Men, White Man, Inferiority

  Frantz Fanon (1967). “Black Skin, White Masks”, p.60, Pluto Press

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• I just hope I don't become so blissful I become boring. I think I'll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.

  Kurt Cobain

  Thinking, Truthful, Boring

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• Healing the self means committing ourselves to a wholehearted willingness to be what and how we are-beings frail and fragile, strong and passionate, neurotic and balanced, diseased and whole, partial and complete, stingy and generous, twisted and straight, storm-tossed and quiescent, bound and free.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Strong, Healing, Mean

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• An artist has been defined as a neurotic who continually cures himeself with his art

  Lee Simonson

  Art, Cures, Has Beens

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• The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.

  Robert De Niro

  Crush, Good Day, Writing

  "Girls and OCD" by Tara Fass and Lisa Jonsson, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 12, 2014.

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• Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.

  Richard Bach

  Funny, Beautiful, Wise

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• A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty,
  'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't
  feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own,
  outside of husband and children.

  Betty Friedan

  Children, Husband, Selfish

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• For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Reality, Men, Healthy

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• Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me.

  Charles Bukowski

  Thanksgiving, Suicide, Children

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• There is a tendency to consider anything in human behavior that is unusual, not well known, or not well understood, as neurotic, psychopathic, immature, perverse, or the expression of some other sort of psychologic disturbance.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Science, Expression, Understanding

  Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Paul H. Gebhard (1998). “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”, p.195, Indiana University Press

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• ...The more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.

  Sonja Lyubomirsky

  Lonely, Gratitude, Envious

  Sonja Lyubomirsky (2007). “The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want”, p.81, Penguin

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• Know that the most neurotic, most ugly situation is simply testing you. It is testing capacity, beyond his control, your flexibility, your adjustment and your character.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Inspirational, Character, Ugly

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• Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.

  Sam Keen

  Successful, Play, Bored

  Sam Keen (1980). “What to do when you're bored and blue”

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• Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. To me, neither option is worth pursuing.

  John Shelby Spong

  Religious, Jesus, Memories

  John Shelby Spong (2009). “Jesus for the Non-Religious”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• Neurotic means he is not as sensible as I am, and psychotic means he's even worse than my brother-in-law.

  Karl A. Menninger

  Brother, Mean, Law

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• All Dickens's humour couldn't save Dickens, save him from his overcrowded life, its sordid and neurotic central tragedy and its premature collapse. But Dickens's humour, and all such humour, has saved or at least greatly served the world.

  Stephen Leacock

  Tragedy, World, Humour

  Stephen Leacock (2010). “My Remarkable Uncle”, p.114, New Canadian Library

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• I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east.

  Quentin Crisp

  East, Rooms, Fit

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 21, 1968.

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• The content dictates the style all the time. That's the way it is. If the content of the film - as in Husbands and Wives - is highly jagged, neurotic, fast-paced, nervous New York film, it just called for that kind of shooting, editing and performance.

  Woody Allen

  Editing, Style, Shooting

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• An artist, in my experience, is a man or woman of unusual talent and peculiar, highly individual sensibility, with an independent and probably contrary mind, driven by mysterious passions for which another word is neurosis. In getting from point A to point B, the neurotic goes via point Q. It's in that roundabout that people are either completely crippled and hopeless in life, or highly creative.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Passion, Independent, Artist

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• For the last year and a half, I went from being a crazy workout girl to sort of saying, "My body wants a little bit a of break." So I kind of stay with more simple stuff and taking walks and not being neurotic about working out and eating right. I started to enjoy life a little bit more. The only downside to that is there's that couple extra pounds and about 4,000 pregnancy rumors, but you know, other than that, it feels great.

  Jennifer Aniston

  Girl, Workout, Couple

  "Jennifer Aniston "feels great" about putting on weight but jokes about pregnancy rumours" by Claire Rutter, www.mirror.co.uk. November 13, 2014.

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• Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns--fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns--seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Perspective, People, Rejection

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• The man who accepts Western values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions, and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and, in chronic cases, to take his own life.

  Paul Robeson

  Men, Western Values, Creative

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• You must overcome any shyness and have a conversation with the librarian, because he can offer you reliable advice that will save you much time. You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation. A person who asks for help makes the librarian happy.

  Umberto Eco

  Memories, Two, Advice

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