Neurotic Quotes

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Robert A. Heinlein

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.
Marlon Brando

I'm afraid of making a mistake. I'm not totally neurotic, but I'm pretty neurotic about it. I'm as close to totally neurotic as you can get without being totally neurotic.
Bridget Fonda

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
Anatole France

When I was a teenager, if anyone recognized me for anything I did, it would ruin my day. I couldn't handle it. It was some sort of neurotic phobia. I guess I was paranoid that people would treat me differently, or in an unfair way, because of my job.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt

It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.
Gene Tierney

We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.
Lillian Hellman

And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing.
Jenna Elfman

In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always suspect an opponent, and note who suffers most because of the patient's condition. Usually this is a member of the family.
Alfred Adler

A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.
Jerome Lawrence

And I know I'm paranoid and neurotic, I've made a career out of it.
Thom Yorke

All successful people these days seem to be neurotic. Perhaps we should stop being sorry for them and start being sorry for me - for being so confounded normal.
Deborah Kerr

I'm fairly competant as a director and actor, but I am Mr. Neurotic as a writer. I just don't have enough confidence in my abilities to take criticism well. I take it personally. Start with 'It's a masterpiece,' and then tell me what you think could be changed.
Tim Robbins

I'm sure acting is a deeply neurotic thing to do.
Ralph Fiennes

My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day.
Martha Beck

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
Sylvia Plath

I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
Stephen Sondheim

The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
Alfred Adler

I think with comedy I get very sort of critical of myself and try and do the best I can and it doesn't come as second nature. I work at those kinds of films. It doesn't mean I can't do them - I've done two now, and I have a great time doing them, but I just find myself a little bit more neurotic.
Elisha Cuthbert

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.
Gene Wilder

My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.

James Earl Jones

I don't like psychiatry. I don't believe it works. I believe psychiatrists are neurotic or psychotic, for the most part.

Kirstie Alley

I can honestly say this industry hasn't made me neurotic about my looks, except maybe my weight. I hope my clothes kind of reflect that. They're meant to make you feel good.

Stella McCartney

I hate the crazy, neurotic characters beyond a certain point.

Len Wein

I'm a neurotic New York Jew by birth. Creating characters is second nature to me.

Len Wein

I have had time to analyze my feelings. I am certain that they are totally neurotic, sexist, silly, and a big waste of time.

Phil Donahue

It is one of the most effective attitudes of the neurotic to measure thumbs down, so to speak, a real person by an ideal, since in doing so he can depreciate him as much as he wishes.

Alfred Adler

Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you're just trying to get in and you're given so little time to get in gently, but it's always hard.
William Hurt

Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another.
Jonathan Lethem

I try not to be but I'm super-neurotic about diet. I'm neurotic about trying not to be neurotic! I'm like every other girl. I have to try really hard my whole life to try to be fit. And I'm super-vain. And I want to wear cute clothes.
Gwen Stefani

The funny thing is, I look at these magazines that make me so insecure and neurotic, but I'm in them!
Heather Graham

People look at me and go, 'You must have it made. You have girls. You have a great life.' It's not true. I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I'm just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know.
John Stamos

I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I'm just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know.
John Stamos

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
Thomas Szasz

For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.
Guillermo del Toro

It's a very complex scenario, and certainly Dave was, and is, not the only person in Pearl Jam with personality flaws. Everybody in this band exhibits some form of neurotic behavior. And we couldn't find a balance, a mutual respect for each other.
Stone Gossard

Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.
Curtis Sittenfeld

I can't deal with actors! I can't deal with myself. We're neurotic and miserable ... I love doing what I'm doing, but while I'm doing it, I'm miserable.
Viola Davis

My mother's father drank and her mother was an unhappy, neurotic woman, and I think she has lived all her life afraid of anyone who drinks for fear something like that might happen to her.
John Hurt

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.
Lionel Trilling

They show that roughly two-thirds of a group of neurotic patients will recover or improve to a marked extent within about two years of the onset of their illness, whether they are treated by means of psychotherapy or not.

Hans Eysenck

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

Louis Auchincloss

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

Georges Bataille

Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

Jon Ronson

I think coming to work and being absurd and neurotic and thoughtful at the same time is far more interesting.

Lake Bell

During the lifetime of Japan I became very neurotic, very paranoid.

David Sylvian

A considerable number of persons are able to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious neurotic phenomena only through intense work.

Karl Abraham

I'm a neurotic Jew who doesn't want loans. I can't even carry a balance on my credit card without having a nervous breakdown.
Duff Goldman

All currency is neurotic currency.
Norman O. Brown

Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy.
Connie Willis

In general, certain conclusions are possible from these data. They fail to prove that psychotherapy, Freudian or otherwise, facilitates the recovery of neurotic patients.
Hans Eysenck