Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.
ADAM PHILLIPSMonogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.
ADAM PHILLIPSThere is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden.
ADAM PHILLIPSSanity, as the project of keeping ourselves recognizably human, therefore has to limit the range of human experience.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’
ADAM PHILLIPSWe are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe past influences everything and dictates nothing.
ADAM PHILLIPSSanity, in other words, becomes a pressing preoccupation as soon as we recognize the importance of recognition.
ADAM PHILLIPSTo grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe 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 PHILLIPSThe vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd.
ADAM PHILLIPSWe are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
ADAM PHILLIPSExcesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..
ADAM PHILLIPSWe 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 PHILLIPSTragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
ADAM PHILLIPSWe are children for a very long time.
ADAM PHILLIPSwe are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see.
ADAM PHILLIPS