Quotes About Compulsion

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

Making money is certainly the one addiction I cannot shake.

Authorship has never been with me a matter of choice. I have not done it for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it.

Then they're like addicts; they can't help themselves... They will steal, cheat, embezzle and commit other crimes just to get money to gamble

Muse is a tyrant. It gets you out of bed in the twilight of the morning and forces you to create something!

I say if you love something, set it in a small cage and pester and smother it with love until it either loves you back or dies.

For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

Without sounding cliché, music is like air. It provides for me. I don't necessarily look for what I can get out of it. It's a compulsion. I've always gotten out of it everything.

The nature of my compulsion was such that I danced in my sleep. The entire household was sometimes awakened by loud thumping sounds coming from my room.

Addiction is not something we can simply take care of by applying the proper remedy. For it is in the very nature of addiction to feed on our attempts to master it.

It is a part of the nature of man to resist compulsion.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

You don't want it, but the destiny oblige it

Need doesn't care about being sensible.

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

Hellingafwaards. Je wil wel, maar moet lopen alsof je niet wil.

I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.

We were too sick of the case to talk about it anymore but too obsessed with it to talk about anything else.

Life is unbearably perverse; that which we most seek to avoid always becomes unavoidable.

But being an addict means that you never stipulate to being an adult. You may, as the occasion requires, adopt the trade dress of a grown-up, showing responsibility and gravitas in spurts to get by, but the rest of the time, you do what you want when you want.