Narcissism Quotes - Page 8

• I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.

  Frank O'Hara

  Age, Different, Firsts

  Frank O'Hara (1977). “Early writing”, Bookpeople

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• The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Differences, Levels, Derivatives

  "Something Borrowed". www.newyorker.com. November 22, 2004.

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• Depending on the year or the therapist he was seeing, he'd learned to ascribe just about every facet of his character as a psychological reaction to his parents' fighting: his laziness, his overachieving, his tendency to isolate, his tendency to seduce, his hypochondria, his sense of invulnerability, his self-loathing, his narcissism.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Character, Fighting, Self

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.235, Macmillan

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• Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look?

  Haruki Murakami

  Husband, Views, People

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1997.

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• I admire narcissism in Momus and others who "own" it and use it as a way to explore ideas/themselves and also as a form of humor. I don't think of myself as narcissistic, but I'm definitely incredibly self absorbed. I guess I wonder if seeing the world through the lens of yourself is necessarily less valid than other ways of thinking/seeing though.

  Marie Calloway

  Thinking, Self, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Technology, Mirrors, People

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away”, p.11, HarperCollins UK

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• Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Brother, Teenager, Emotional

  Mark Z. Danielewski (2000). “Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves”

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• Let me tell you what I just heard. Talk, talk, talk, I. Talk, talk, talk, I. Well, what about me?

  Gena Showalter

  Let Me, Heard, Wells

  Gena Showalter (2014). “Lords of the Underworld Collection 3: The Darkest Secret\The Darkest Surrender\The Darkest Seduction”, p.1038, Harlequin

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• The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein... provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother's face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.

  Donald Woods Winnicott

  Mother, Baby, Children

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• I don't know if it's naivete or just narcissism, but I start out with this notion that I can do anything. It's not until I get into it that I realize what I've thrown myself into, and then I will do anything not to humiliate myself. And that, I think, is the secret to my success.

  Michelle Pfeiffer

  Thinking, Secret, Realizing

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• Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.

  Anna Kamienska

  Letting Go, Writing, Hands

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