There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs
ADAM PHILLIPSWanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.
More Adam Phillips Quotes
-
-
It is as if to say: if these are not valued – if these forms of wanting and feeling and speaking and doing – are not cultivated and encouraged and rewarded in the child, then the child will be mad.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe
ADAM PHILLIPS -
You write to find out what you believe.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults ,
ADAM PHILLIPS -
Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
I am always true to myself, that is the problem. Who else could I be true to?
ADAM PHILLIPS -
The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
Transgression is a quest for solitude
ADAM PHILLIPS -
we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
There is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage
ADAM PHILLIPS -
The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality – to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting – but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail.
ADAM PHILLIPS -
The child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’
ADAM PHILLIPS