Quotes About Compulsion

I've got you under my skin, or is it just my eczma again?

A un borracho se le puede hablar -me decía una vez- y hasta dice cosas, pero ¿quien resiste la conversación de un jugador o un mujeriego? No hay por debajo de ella sino la de un aficionado a toros, colmo y copete de la estupidez.

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

I'm a food addict, that's my downfall.

Sex drives us, love or no love. Power or no power. Money or no money. It's the most powerful drug in the world. Some pay for it. Some die for it.'

It is no part of a physician's business to use either persuasion or compulsion upon the patients.

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

I have a bad gambling problem. You're not in show business for 12 years and dress like this without a bad gambling problem.

The trouble with addiction is that you can park the car but you can never switch off the engine or stop yourself from hearing the revs.

The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.

no, I thought, only what it makes you do, clawing at the trees, splintering the bark like a tomcat, the blind and violent need of it, a joy, but who would not want to be relieved of it. I pity

I should not yield to it, he told himself once again as he walked along carrying the briefcase. Compulsion-obsession-phobia. But he could not free himself. It in my grip, I in its, he thought.

It was on the order of coin or stamp collecting; no rational explanation could ever be given. And high prices were being paid by wealthy collectors.

Der Geist eines Junkies ist wie die Musik, die du aus dem Radiowecker hörst - manchmal klingt sie ja ganz hübsch, aber sie ist nur dazu da, dich zu etwas Bestimmtem zu veranlassen. Die Musik aus dem Radiowecker soll dich aufwecken; die Musik des Junkies soll dich in ein Werkzeug zur Beschaffung von immer mehr Stoff verwandeln.

The urge, the longing, to take another shower was overwhelming him.

He was a reader and recognized his habit of reading as obsessive and neurotic…

I have been in the bodies of starvers and purgers, gluttons and addicts. They all think their actions make their lives more desirable. But the body always defeats them in the end.

In my experience, it was hard to write without your preferred tools, but impossible to write without a cigarette.

My sisters and I refuse to feel bad about shopping. And why should we? Obviously we have some hole we're trying to fill, but doesn't everyone? And isn't filling it with berets the size of toilet-seat covers, if not more practical, then at least healthier than filling it with frosting or heroin or unsafe sex with strangers?

It was also horribly embarrassing, and the fact that none of them knew she could sense their emotions only made it worse. It was as if she stood outside their windows, listening to whispered conversations they'd never meant to share with her, and the fact that she had no choice—that she could no longer not sense the feelings of those about her—only made her feel perversely guilty when she did.

ineluctably.

Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he found himself suddenly accosted by some kind of synaesthetic fixation with the woman: hearing the colour of her hair in the mosque, smelling the touch of her hand on the tube, tasting her smile while innocently walking the streets on his way to work; and this in turn led to a knowledge of every public convenience in London, led to the kind of masturbation that even a fifteen-year-old boy living in Shetlands might find excessive.

You dream… or you're driven mad.

I'm a true-crime addict. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but I can't stop.