Neurosis Quotes - Page 5

• In the end, I feel that one has to have a bit of neurosis to go on being an artist. A balanced human seldom produces art. It's that imbalance which impels us. I often think that all I want to do now is to avoid suicide, accidental or otherwise. Other than that, I think living on the edge is what drives my work and me beyond a certain point. The artist lives with anxiety. When you finally reach a plateau of achievement, there comes a new anxiety - the hunger to push on still further. That angst is what makes you go forward.

  Beverly Pepper

  Suicide, Art, Thinking

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• Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Desire, Novelists, United States

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• A neurosis is wherever we are allied against our true nature.

  James Hollis

  True Nature

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• Is not our chief neurosis - by which I mean our estrangement from nature - our desire to hold fast to what is forever transforming, to freeze the familiar, to submit motion to stasis, to solicit immortality through rigidity.

  James Hollis

  Mean, Forever, Desire

  James Hollis (2008). “What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life”, p.75, Penguin

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• I mean to say, really, I am near to developing a neurosis - is there anyone around who doesn't want to study or kill me?" Floote raised a tentative hand. "Ah, yes, thank you, Floote." "There is also Mrs Tunstell, madam," he offered hopefully, is if Ivy were some kind of consolation prize. "I notice you don't mention my fair-weather husband." "I suspect, at this moment, madam, he probably wants to kill you." Alexia couldn't help smiling. "Good point.

  Gail Carriger

  Husband, Mean, Hands

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• Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Order, Two, Choices

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.345, A&C Black

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• We are loping sequences of chemical conversions, acting ourselves converted. We are twists of genes acting ourselves twisted; we are wicks of burning neuroses acting ourselves wicked. And nothing to be done about it. And nothing to be done about it.

  Gregory Maguire

  Wicked, Acting, Twists

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• I would want people to take away this idea that sometimes people's problems or neuroses are really the things that are kind of a blessing in disguise, and even though there's sometimes pain associated with these things that sometimes in the face of adversity with obstacles to overcome, people can really kind of soar and find their higher selves.

  Tony Shalhoub

  Pain, Adversity, Blessing

  "Tony Shalhoub Says Goodbye to Monk". Interview with Brian Gallagher, movieweb.com. August 4, 2009.

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• For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

  Evelyn Waugh

  New York, Mistake, Air

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• Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

  Anne Fortier

  Philosophy, Taken, Aunt

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• One of the keys to thinking big is total focus. I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I've noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs.

  Donald Trump

  Successful, Thinking, Keys

  Donald J. Trump, Tony Schwartz (2009). “Trump: The Art of the Deal”, p.47, Ballantine Books

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• We have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a direct pipeline to the unconscious and we have then fallen victim to priestcraft of every conceivable sort.

  Terence McKenna

  Pipeline, Absence, Victim

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• Happiness is your original nature, it is YOU, minus your neurosis

  Robert Holden

  Positivity, Minus, Originals

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• You know, in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art, my poetry, as fuel for them, to torture other people.

  Fred Durst

  Art, Careers, People

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• The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Winter, Clouds

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.429, Vintage

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• Contemporary man is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by "powers" that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food - and, above all, a large array of neuroses

  Carl Jung

  Running, Spiritual, Men

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• I'm not sure I want all my neuroses cleared up

  Patty Duke

  Want, Not Sure

  Patty Duke (2010). “Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness”, p.139, Bantam

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• It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.

  David Lynch

  Mean, Psychology, Magic

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I don't need a psychiatrist.
  I can sort out my fears with my work.
  That's the privilege of all artists,
  to be able to sort out their unhappiness
  and their neuroses in order
  to create something.

  Michael Haneke

  Artist, Order, Needs

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• I started learning to sing what I liked, to experience it in a visceral way. Then it's inside. Get rid of the neurosis and then you can improvise.

  Joe Satriani

  Funny, Inspiring, Way

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• A human being in a neurotic state might very well be compared to a bewitched person, for people caught in a neurosis are apt to behave in a manner uncongenial and destructive towards themselves as well as others.

  Marie-Louise von Franz

  People, Might, States

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• I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.

  Tom Robbins

  Writing, Novelists, Intellect

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.31, Bantam

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• In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.

  Mark Epstein

  Self, Land, Feelings

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• Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses.

  Camille Paglia

  Vegetables, Feminist, Feminism

  1992 'The Return of Carry Nation: Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin', in Playboy, Oct. CollectedinVamps andTramps (1994).

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• Especially in times of collective neurosis, the existence of . . . mature people is of crucial importance.

  Marie-Louise von Franz

  People, Balance, Mature

  Marie-Louise Von Franz (1999). “Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche”, p.234, Shambhala Publications

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