When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe
ADAM PHILLIPSWhen we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe
ADAM PHILLIPSSanity, as the project of keeping ourselves recognizably human, therefore has to limit the range of human experience.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd.
ADAM PHILLIPSMonogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.
ADAM PHILLIPSWe are children for a very long time.
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 PHILLIPSIt 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 PHILLIPSThere is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs
ADAM PHILLIPSThere is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage
ADAM PHILLIPSEverybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.
ADAM PHILLIPSThe child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’
ADAM PHILLIPSYou write to find out what you believe.
ADAM PHILLIPSThere is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden.
ADAM PHILLIPSTo grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.
ADAM PHILLIPSExcesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..
ADAM PHILLIPSTo keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable.
ADAM PHILLIPS