Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.
More Adam Phillips Quotes
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The past influences everything and dictates nothing.
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Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.
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There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden.
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You write to find out what you believe.
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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 ,
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Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
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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.
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Lovers, of course, are notoriously frantic epistemologists, second only to paranoiacs (and analysts) as readers of signs and wonders.
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We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.
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The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.
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There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs
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I am always true to myself, that is the problem. Who else could I be true to?
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To our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need.
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We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
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One thing you discover in psychoanalytic treatment is the limits of what you can change about yourself or your life.
ADAM PHILLIPS






