Quotes About Self-absorption

People are very narcissistic. It's not all their fault. We live in a society where there is a magazine for you, a channel for you, a perfume for you.

We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick.

Projecting yourself until everything is talking about you is, of course, a self-flattering form of self-pity

There was nothing more unattractive than narcissism, she thought: nothing could transform beauty into a cloying, unattractive quality than that self-conscious appreciation of self.

And the problem was that there was a positive epidemic of narcissism, encouraged by commercial manipulation and by the shallow values of Hollywood films. And interestingly enough, the real growth area was male narcissism.

There were few other passengers: a man in an overcoat, his head sunk against his chest; a couple with arms around each other, impervious to their surroundings; and a teenage boy with a black scarf wound round his neck, Zorro-style. Isabel smiled to herself: a microcosm of our condition, she thought. Loneliness and despair; love and its self-absorption; and sixteen, which was a state all its own.

Nobody enjoys being on display, said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, Except actors. And narcissists.

We live in a narcissistic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having read, without the antecedent labor of actually reading.

I dote on myself. There is a lot of me and all so luscious.

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

I didn't really give a sh** what's going on in the rest of the world. I just didn't. I just wanted to focus on me, me, me, my career, my life, just me - blinders.

Rather than increasing stress by decreasing the time available for other work, volunteering is a proven way to reduce stress because it reduces the tendency to self-absorption.

Aren't you interested in anything except yourself? Not much.

There was one of his loneliness coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully – assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.

He knew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.

There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.

I'll never miss a chance to remind you of what a brat you were. A gloriously beautiful and very spoiled brat. I was utterly charmed by your complete self-absorption. It was rather like courting a cat.

The good life is thereby widely confused with unrestrained indulgence made possible by nonempathetic self-absorption.

But mainly, people were so wrapped up in their own inner hurricane that they never saw anything outside the storm of themselves.

And I'd figured out that no one cared, not really. No one gave a shit about anything but himself. People were addled by their own chatter, their own personal litany of fears and insecurities, self-loathing, and selfish desires. Hardly anyone could hear over that. I was invisible if I wanted to be.

He craved the love of a father who seemed too remote and too self-absorbed to attend to his boyish needs.

a fully flowered narcissist.

Fear was a solipsist, a narcissist, blind to everything except itself.

I felt like everywhere I went, I was surrounded by people who were broadcasting but not receiving. Narcissism, it occurred to me, is a corruption of attention - it's where your attention becomes turned in only on yourself and your own ego.