Self Absorbed Quotes

To be intuitive, we must cultivate our sense of humor and look for reasons to laugh everywhere. We become so self-absorbed and serious when it comes to our problems and melodramas that we disconnect from our deeper sense of who we are as beautiful souls-we withdraw from life instead of enjoying it. Laughter brings us back to ourselves and back to life. ~ Sonia Choquette

While some male "admirers" of trans women tend to fetishize us for our femininity or our imagined sexual submissiveness, I find trans women hot because we are anything but docile or demure. In order to survive as a trans woman, you must be, by definition, impervious, unflinching, and tenacious. In a culture in which femaleness and femininity are on the receiving end of a seemingly endless smear campaign, there is no act more brave - especially for someone assigned a male sex at birth - than embracing one's femme self.

And unlike those male tranny-chasers who say that they like "T-girls" because we are supposedly "the best of both worlds", I am attracted to trans women because we are all woman! My femaleness is so intense that it has overpowered the trillions of lameass Y chromosomes that sheepishly hide inside the cells of my body. And my femininity is so relentless that it has survived over thirty years of male socialisation and twenty years of testosterone poisoning. Some kinky-identified thrill-seekers may envision trans women as androgyne fuck fantasies, but that's only because they are too self-absorbed to appreciate how completely fucking female we are. ~ Julia Serano

Kyra." Fred caught Kyra's eyes. "I'm not in love with Ariana and I don't want half the kingdom."
"You don't?"
He shook his head. "But I might stick around for a little while longer. There are some interesting things in the Kingdom of Mohr."
"Like what?"
"Like a certain funny and extremely talented potioner."
Kyra took a breath. "I have to warn you, Hal isn't that great as a boyfriend. He's pretty self absorbed. ~ Bridget Zinn

As for the danger of alienating people with good intentions - well, one of the things that I learned from RaceFail (and also from general experience) was that people with good intentions are the ones to fear most. The overt racists are easy to deal with. You can spot them coming a mile away. But the well-intentioned people are scarier. They might not intend harm, but in most cases they haven't thought about all the racist (and other "-ist") messages they've absorbed from society. They haven't done the basic groundwork necessary to purge themselves of that passively-absorbed "-ism". So they say the most incredibly hurtful, self-absorbed, and utterly useless things, then compound the problem by getting upset when they're called on it. I liken these people to sleeper agents - they seem OK at first, but then they suddenly "activate" and stab you in the back, and then they come out of their fugue and freak because there's blood on their hands and they don't know how it got there and they refuse to accept that they're the ones who put it there, OMG, OMG. Meanwhile, you're on the floor bleeding out, unnoticed because of their histrionics.

The rage of RaceFail made many of these well-intentioned sleeper agents wake up. So while yes, I think the anger risked alienating some of them, I'm fine with that. They were always dangerous; I haven't lost anything by their alienation. The ones who wake up are a gain (or they will be, once they shift from "not causing harm" anymore ~ N.K. Jemisin

In 1944-1945, Dr Ancel Keys, a specialist in nutrition and the inventor of the K-ration, led a carefully controlled yearlong study of starvation at the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene. It was hoped that the results would help relief workers in rehabilitating war refugees and concentration camp victims. The study participants were thirty-two conscientious objectors eager to contribute humanely to the war effort. By the experiment's end, much of their enthusiasm had vanished.
Over a six-month semi-starvation period, they were required to lose an average of twenty-five percent of their body weight." [...] p193

p193-194
"...the men exhibited physical symptoms...their movements slowed, they felt weak and cold, their skin was dry, their hair fell out, they had edema. And the psychological changes were dramatic. "[...]
p194
"The men became apathetic and depressed, and frustrated with their inability to concentrate or perform tasks in their usual manner. Six of the thirty-two were eventually diagnosed with severe "character neurosis," two of them bordering on psychosis. Socially, they ceased to care much about others; they grew intensely selfish and self-absorbed. Personal grooming and hygiene deteriorated, and the men were moody and irritable with one another. The lively and cooperative group spirit that had developed in the three-month control phase of the experiment evaporated. Most participants lost interest in group act ~ Michelle Stacey

Give me needy emotional whining bullshit.
Flash.
Give me self-absorbed egocentric twaddle.
Christ. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I love that Katie would never, ever, in a million years, treat anyone as blatantly shitty as you've treated her tonight. It's a shame you're so thoroughly self-absorbed that it renders you incapable of getting to know her, because believe me, if you could, you'd be a better person for it. ~ Kim Holden

It has struck me that people seldom listen to the meaning of underlying words.There are only a few people who recognize the silence beyond the scream,the gentle weeping that hides beyond tough statements.They hear only the words,the sentences,when there is so much more to take in.People who are too self-absorbed to notice,really see or fathom others.
Often,they don't even know themselves. ~ Esther Verhoef

Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow. ~ Stephen Schwartz

Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed. They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare. ~ Nick Tosches

Then you have this other phenomena of the paranormal romance. It's all the benefits of being a vampire without the sacrifices. By the gods, Meyer's vampires walk around sparkling in the daylight and some are vegetarians. But this phenomenon is also tied to a lot of our communal fears. Fear of aging. Fear of fading youth. Fear of loneliness. But whereas the classic motifs are more concerned with confronting and overcoming our fears, the fears of the paranormal romance genre become twisted fantasies of denial. The idea of staying young, attractive and powerful for eternity feeds into the modern self-absorbed ethos. ~ Julie Ann Dawson

He looked at her for a moment, amazed. "How did you know that? How can a servant girl like you understand so much?"
Because self-absorbed man-children are common as weeds, thought Mary. But she said, "I don't know, sir. I only guessed. ~ Y.S. Lee

You see, programmers tend to be arrogant, self-absorbed introverts. We didn't get into this business because we like people. Most of us got into programming because we prefer to deeply focus on sterile minutia, juggle lots of concepts simultaneously, and in general prove to ourselves that we have brains the size of a planet, all while not having to interact with the messy complexities of other people. ~ Robert C. Martin

One of the things that confirmed Hyacinth's suspicion that America was an evil, lonely place was that people were islands unto themselves. And so when Avril drifted away, there was no friend or neighbor or pastor or coworker to reach out to and ask after her child. ~ Naomi Jackson

Dymphna's talk of concentration camp survivors reminds you that you are super-privileged and self-absorbed and that really your suffering doesn't mean much by comparison.
'You have to choose how you respond to your own suffering. Everyone has to find meaning.'
'Everyone is full of shit,' you want to say, but you don't. You are learning not to say such things. This is what is meant by well-adjusted. ~ Suzanne Scanlon

In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar, two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs - not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore's eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek's executive washroom. ~ Mark Steyn

He told me things about himself that should have made him sound urbane but did the opposite. He told me, for example, that he liked Steve Reich's music, modern-art museums, and Beat poetry. These words flew out of his mouth and went boomeranging back as if they knew they weren't meant to take the conversation anywhere but back to him. He also explained that he really liked interacting with different kinds of people. When I didn't immediately respond to this, he repeated it, and so I assured him I believed it. ~ Olivia Sudjic

Relationships are give-and-take, and when you're a tennis player, you're certainly not giving. You have to be self-absorbed. It has to be about you. ~ Chris Evert

Facebook had to be the biggest playground for self-absorbed assholes that the world had ever seen. ~ Jana Deleon

This is not the "relativism of truth" presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. president turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a "mockery of the promise and fitness of things," to return to the OED definition of irony.

This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They a ~ Arved Mark Ashby

A major Iowa newspaper published an op-ed against Trump calling him a 'self-absorbed, wholly unqualified feckless blowhard.' Or as Trump put it, 'You forgot very rich ... I'm a very rich, self-absorbed, wholly unqualified feckless blowhard. Very, very rich.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

Every decade of my life I attempted to write a novel. But I had nothing to say. I was far too self-absorbed, and now I realize I was writing for others, so that they'd applaud me, see my genius, tell me how wonderful I am, or be jealous of my success. ~ Louise Penny

I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT when this book comes out, Scientologists will scream about religious intolerance, say that I am a liar, that I was kicked out of the church, and call Troublemaker the work of a hateful bigot or a self-absorbed person with an "insatiable craving for attention." (That last part might not be totally untrue; I am an actress, after all.) What they will likely not do, however, is actually read this book, because that would be going against one of the basic tenets of Scientology. A member should not read or watch anything generated by someone whom the church ~ Leah Remini

He'd come to appreciate that writers were just like everyone else, except when they were more so. It sometimes seemed that they'd been able to develop their gifts thanks to a lack of inhibition, an inner permission to feel and react, that made them seem self-absorbed and insensitive to the existence of anyone else. ~ Jonathan Galassi

I may distance myself from God from time to time, wandering off in the ignorance of my self-absorbed preoccupations and attitudes
But God is never far off. Never distant.
Never remote.
He is close enough to hear the raw, unbridled "fuck" in my silent prayer of anguish.
Close enough to feel the groaning angst and tension in my gut that oft threatens to rend me to pieces.
Close enough to hear my heart slam itself in abandon against the walls of this temple of skin in holy desperation; clutching at the veil that dulls and distorts my vision.
Close enough to catch me as I stumble in my blind and weary state yet again and again and again.
Yes, He is close. She is never far off. God is my faithful friend and traveling companion, though I see Him not yet with these orbs of flesh. ~ Mac MacKenzie

Time is self absorbed, takes what it wants and doesn't return the favor. It is greedy, its pockets full of the lives of those left behind. It is a magician and a thief. ~ Leigh Hershkovich

The most self-absorbed people display an ironic pension for the smallest minds and the largest mouths. ~ Aaron W. Matthews

There are people so blind and self-absorbed in all matters that they always believe that, whatever they desire or think, they can impose their will on other people. Whatever bad reason they use to persuade others, these self-centered people are so caught up in the process that it seems to them all they have to do is to speak their wishes in a lofty and commanding tone of voice in order to convince everybody. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

People are self-absorbed. I think that the mass ability of communication now probably allows individuals to meet more self-absorbed individuals. It has certainly changed the way that people meet. ~ Nicholas Sparks

I insist on remaining aloof, self-absorbed, lovingly nursing my suspicions. ~ Charles Simic

He had spent a lot of time thinking about himself, and had come to the conclusion that he was definitely not self-absorbed. ~ Scott Meyer

My dogs, the only creatures on the planet marked by my singular nurturing imprint, have all turned out to be rude and self-absorbed. In all likelihood, if they were children instead of dogs, I would have foisted more Charlie Sheens or Kardashians onto our crumbling culture. ~ Merrill Markoe

If anybody studying psychology wants a concrete example of what a narcissist looks like, I advise them to consider any man who cheats on his wife. These guys are the textbook me-firsters, the ones who think the rules don't apply to them, the ones who tell themselves as long as she doesn't know, there's no harm done. No woman needs to sleep with these guys. There are so many single self-absorbed narcissists who will fuck you poorly. ~ Julie Klausner

There was a tradition of soap-box public speaking in Sator Square. "Speaking" was stretching a point to cover the ranters, haranguers and occasional self-absorbed mumblers that spaced themselves at intervals amongst the crowds. And, traditionally, people said whatever was on their minds and at the top of their voices. The Patrician, it was said, looked kindly on the custom. He did. And very closely, too. He probably had someone make notes. ~ Terry Pratchett

Who or what inspires you?"
"I must admit that I often read my own articles in scientific journals and inspire myself. ~ Eoin Colfer

I was feeling privileged and self-conscious about my life as a musician, which feels self-absorbed. I can't help it, I am a musician. This is what I do. ~ Sufjan Stevens

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself. ~ Chuck Klosterman

You really are a complete idiot if you believe that," Henry hisses, the note balled in his fist. "When have I ever, since the first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you? Are you so fucking self-absorbed as to think this is about you and whether or not I love you, rather than the fact I'm an heir to the fucking throne? You at least have the option to not choose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family, so don't you dare come to me and question if I love you when it's the thing that could bloody well ruin everything. ~ Casey McQuiston

It scares me to speak my mind, it might sound self-absorbed, I don't say half of what I think, I wonder what I'm thinking for ~ Chantal Kreviazuk

Potter, you really are just as foolish and preposterously self-absorbed as your father. ~ G. Norman Lippert

There's a lot of movies about self absorbed white men and I just figured it's about time to make a movie about self absorbed black men. ~ Neil Drumming

Little children never get frozen by their selfishness. Like the disciples, they come just as they are, totally self-absorbed. They seldom get it right. As parents or friends, we know all that. In fact, we are delighted (most of the time!) to find out what is on their little hearts. We don't scold them for being self-absorbed or fearful. That is just who they are. ~ Paul Miller

Human nature means battling constantly between being completely self-absorbed and trying to be a communal creature. Nature makes you a communal creature. The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell. And mostly, we're not made up of cancer cells. ~ George Lucas

The main thing I've noticed, however, is how unreasonable, self-absorbed and permanently outraged caffeine has made me. ~ Caitlin Moran

Living a self-absorbed life will always be at the cost of everyone else. ~ Timothy Keller

Birthday parties and events will be thrown for the child to elicit admiration and attention from others. However, the child will be punished, berated and humiliated in the middle of the party in front of an audience if they behave against the expectations of the self-absorbed mother. The party only serves to generate additional narcissistic supply for the mother, not a pleasurable event for the child. Events are scheduled, changed, and cancelled in order to exert and announce control over the child. They make it very apparent to the child that the mother can both give pleasure and take pleasure away by these means. ~ J.B. Snow

Everything said about Gen Xers
both positive and negative
was completely true. Twenty-somethings in the nineties rejected the traditional working-class American lifestyle because (a) they were smart enough to realize those values were unsatisfying, and (b) they were totally fucking lazy. Twenty-somethings in the nineties embraced a record like Nirvana's Nevermind because (a) it was a sociocultural affront to the vapidity of the Reagan-era paradigm, and (b) it fucking rocked. Twenty-somethings in the nineties were by and large depressed about the future, mostly because (a) they knew there was very little to look forward to, and (b) they were obsessed with staring into the eyes of their own self-absorbed sadness. There are no myths about Generation X. It's all true. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Los Angeles was the most glamorous, tackiest, most elegant, seediest, most clever, dumbest, most beautiful, ugliest, forward-looking, retro-thinking, altruistic, self-absorbed, deal-savvy, politically ignorant, artistic-minded, criminal-loving, meaning-obsessed, money-grubbing, laid-back, frantic city on the planet. And any two slices of it, as different as Bel Air and Watts, were nevertheless uncannily alike in essence: rich with the same crazy hungers, hopes, and despairs. ~ Dean Koontz

Finally, I applied to one of my roommates, more sagacious than the rest, for advice. Dave, I said. I'm broke and without prospects. I've blown my GI Bill on flying lessons. I can't hide out here in college much longer. What should I do?

Well, he said, at this crucial juncture you need to coldly appraise yourself. "I've only known you these few short years, but it strikes me you wouldn't be good for anything important; I'd have to say you're lazy, self-absorbed, glib and facetious, always ready to mock the suggestions of others, but never offering anything positive of your own. Intellectually shallow, no tap root anywhere, spiritually neutered, without feeling or compassion, unsteady of focus, lacking the fortitude for the long pull, with no fixed belief in anything."

I shook his hand and thanked him. The acuity of his analysis made my path clear. My only hope lay in daily journalism. ~ Phil Garlington

The world is wrong. It took me twenty-five years to realise and now I don't think I can bear it any more. The world is wrong, and I am too small to fix it, too self-absorbed. ~ Sara Baume

The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

The presence of God compelled human[s] to quest for an ideal. They had to strive for something to win God's blessing.... Nietzsche feared that with God's passing even that striving would stop. No one would think it worthwhile to try to overcome himself. People who would live happily with their own limitations.... Worse was life in which humanity had lost all interest in ideals. This was the world epitomized by "The Last Man." This creature hops and blinks on the Earth's crust, small and self-seeking, lives with the most pitiable credo: `One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: Both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.' The Last Man has his `little poison now and then: That makes for agreeable dreams'; he is cautious, self-absorbed, noncommittal.... What happens now and in the future if our most intelligent students never learn to strive to overcome what they are? ~ Mark Edmundson

I've seen middle grade books criticized by adult readers for leaving things for the reader to figure out, for not having perfect happily-ever-after endings. They get knocked for being too depressing, for using too many big words, for featuring parental characters who are too clueless. Girl protagonists are "too angry" or "too self-absorbed." The issues raised are "too heavy," the books "too earnest," "too quiet," "too hard," "too far-reaching," "too strange," and it is all too too much for the reader.

Except it's never the readers themselves saying these things.

Our critical discourse in middle grade is sometimes much more about what the reviewer believes children's books should be rather than about engaging with the book itself and the literature as a whole. When we say a book is "too sad," "too scary," "too complicated;" when we demand that endings are perfectly happy and all tied up; when we demand that the themes not be too weighty or the characters not face too much hardship; we are projecting our own biases onto the book, and using them to prescribe what books for this age range can or cannot do. This is nannying, not literary criticism - and it doesn't give kids much credit. ~ Anne Ursu

Jesus gave a vivid object lesson his last night with the disciples by washing their feet, like a servant. Parents know the self-giving principle by instinct as they pour their energies into their self-absorbed children. Volunteers in soup kitchens and hospices and mission projects learn this lesson by doing.* What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver. ~ Philip Yancey

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books ... I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life. ~ Kanye West

It was exciting in its own self-absorbed way, which is very much the essence of journalism: you truly believe that you are living at the center of the universe and that the world out there is on tenterhooks waiting for the next copy of whatever publication you work at. ~ Nora Ephron

Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values. ~ Michael Lewis

Beauty was all I'd ever cared for. It was all that ever moved me. ~ Heather Crews

This self-absorbed perspective treats God as a genie who simply exists to serve you in your selfish pursuit of personal fulfillment. But God is not your servant, and if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality. Never forget that life is not about you! You exist for God's purposes, not vice versa. Why would God provide heaven on earth when he's planned the real thing for you in eternity? God gives us our time on earth to build and strengthen our character for heaven. ~ Rick Warren

I feel people think I'm almost like a robot - like an android ... I just don't really get portrayed as someone who has feelings or who is sympathetic ... like a self-absorbed ice queen. ~ Megan Fox

I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man. ~ Fernando Pessoa

As long as we live, our self-absorption and our insecurity will walk together, holding hands and swinging them back and forth like two little girls on their way to a pretend playground they can never find. Human nature dictates that most often we will be as insecure as we are self-absorbed. The best possible way to keep from getting sucked into the superficial narcissistic mentality that money, possessions, and sensuality can satisfy and secure us is to deliberately give ourselves to something much greater ... [Christ] showed us that giving, rather than getting, is the means to receiving ... to find yourself, your true self, you must lose yourself in something larger. ~ Beth Moore

Defined simply, narcissism means excessive self-preoccupation; pragmatism means excessive focus on work, achievement, and the practical concerns of life; and restlessness means an excessive greed for experience, an overeating, not in terms of food but in terms of trying to drink in too much of life...And constancy of all three together account for the fact that we are so habitually self-absorbed by heartaches, headaches, and greed for experience that we rarely find the time and space to be in touch with the deeper movements inside of and around us. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

I'm not claiming that Stanley wasn't self-absorbed, but I don't think that just because he was obsessive-retentive he was a monomaniac, or even any more egocentric than anybody else in the movies. And I suppose that he was selfish, which doesn't exactly make him a freak in the Director's Guild (or the Writer's Guild either), nor was his particular selfishness uncharacteristic of artists in general, especially when they've acquired the reputation for genius. A powerful vision can be very fragile while it's still only in the mind, and people have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect it. He didn't think he was the only person in the world, or the only director, or even the only great director. I just think that he thought he was the greatest director, although he never said so in so many words. ~ Michael Herr

Loving yourself ... does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion ~ Margot Anand

You don't have the touching rights." "How do I get those?" Stop being a self-absorbed spoiled baby. "You get those if I fall in love with you." He stopped. "In love. You're serious?" "Yes." That would shut him up. "What is this, the sixteenth century? Should I write you a sonnet next?" "Is it going to be a good sonnet? ~ Ilona Andrews

the despair displayed by young children on loss of their mother is a normal response to frustration of their absolute need for her presence ... children usually manage to survive, it is true, but at the cost of developing a defensive attitude to emotional detachment, and by becoming self-absorbed and self-reliant to an unusual degree. Typically, they are left with lasting doubts about their capacity to elicit care and affection. ~ Anthony Stevens

There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion. ~ J.I. Packer

To call someone a navel gazer on the mainland is to say that they're narcissistic, self-absorbed in their introspective pursuits. This perspective, I realize, might be the very reason I've come to think of a spiritual life as some sort of luxury. I'm suddenly struck by the irony of a culture that seems to point to personal spiritual quests as somehow selfish when, in the end, those journeys, like the discredited belly button, are ultimately a search for connectivity. ~ Leigh Ann Henion

Sex is about physical attraction, yes, but it's also about trust. I don't trust you. You're completely self-absorbed and egoistic. You offer nothing I want. ~ Ilona Andrews

I was thinking of Anna. I make myself think of her, I do it as an exercise. She is lodged in me like a knife and yet I am beginning to forget her. Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off. Will the entire canvas be empty one day? I have come to realise how little I knew her, I mean how shallowly I knew her, how ineptly. I do not blame myself for this. Perhaps I should. Was I too lazy, too inattentive, too self-absorbed? Yes, all of those things, and yet I cannot think it is a matter of blame, this forgetting, this not-having-known. I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another? ~ John Banville

If they had had a different neighbour, one less self-absorbed and more concerned for others, a man of normal, charitable instincts, their desperate state would not have gone unnoticed, their distress-signals would have been heard, and perhaps they would have been rescued by now. Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single fateful word. They are les miserables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need of charity? ~ Victor Hugo

You're just ... too high-maintenance. Too self-absorbed. And you talk too much - usually about things
that don't matter - and it drives me absolutely nuts. What it comes down to is - you're just not the
woman I need on my arm to get me where I want to go.
Okay, pal, don't sugarcoat it or anything. ~ Toni Blake

It's a tough job being somebody's personal assistant. You have to anwser their phone, manage their correspondence, run their errands, pay their bills, arrange their schedule, and basically do whatever tasks, menial to major, they are too busy or self absorbed or distranted or pampered or disinterested to do themselves. ~ Lee Goldberg

There are few things less stylish than a boring, self absorbed twit ... ~ Karen Karbo

You had the unimaginable luxury of thinking deep thoughts and pursuing endless intellectual conversations, of reveling in simple pleasures with the implicit permission to be totally self-absorbed. Then you grew up, and life hit you in the face with a two-by-four. ~ Kate Hewitt

I feel like I'm part of a generation of people who are stuck in the past and are really self-absorbed. I mean, we're actually taking pictures of ourselves and posting them on Facebook, and keeping in touch with people that should have been out of our lives 15 years ago. ~ Diablo Cody

We can become so insensitive to the Spirit's prodding that we become too idle, too self absorbed and too busy with too many things that in the eyes of God, are worthless. ~ William Branks

I didnt like being reminded about how self-absorbed i was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didnt want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasnt trying to weasel out of anything. I just wasnt in the mood of being on the earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when i see certain sad movies. ~ Donald Miller

This is the Marina. This is where you go between the fraternity or sorority house and your first divorce. Look around, except for our waitress, who I guarantee doesn't live in this neighborhood, it's all people who are completely self-absorbed without a shred of self-awareness." "Wow, that's harsh," Mike said. "You haven't served them," Lily said. ~ Christopher Moore

Emma's mid-twenties had brought a second adolescence even more self-absorbed and doom-laden than the first one. 'Why don't you just come home, sweetheart?' her mum had said on the phone last night, using her quavering, concerned voice, as if her daughter had been abducted. 'Your room's still here. There's jobs at Debenhams' - and for the first time she had been tempted.
Once, she thought she could conquer London. She had imagined a whirl of literary salons, political engagement, larky parties, bittersweet romances conducted on Thames embankments. She had intended to form a band, make short films, write novels, but two years on slim volume of verse was no fatter, and nothing really good had happened to her since she'd been baton-charged at Poll Tax Riots. ~ David Nicholls

The point is not that my life is one long golden summer which I am simply too self-absorbed to appreciate (although it might be, of course, and I am simply too self-absorbed to appreciate it), but that happy moments are possible, and while happy moments are possible I have no right to demand anything more for myself, given the havoc that would be wrought. ~ Nick Hornby

It's effortless to let go of self-absorbed people. It's challenging to let go of someone you care about and it's exceedingly difficult to let go of an ideal and a belief in someone because what exacerbates the disappointment of finding out they weren't who they presented themselves to be, is the betrayal of it. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. ( ... ) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success. ~ Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic. ~ Kate Chopin

People that have been consistently hurt by others in life will only see the one time you hurt them and be blinded to all the good your heart has to offer. They look no further than what they want to see. Unfortunately, most of them remain a victim throughout their life. ~ Shannon L. Alder

In every era there comes a moment when the collective thoughts, whims, and motivations of a people become so self-absorbed, so malignant, so unheeding that nature itself revolts. Man scars the land such that it finally rebels against him. As thoughts can spread despair and death like seedlings of weeds strewn by the wind, so they eventually draw the Gardener to pluck them out. The vetches must be pulled, roots and all. When this happens, the Medium ceases to bless, and instead, it curses. Instead of healing, it spews poison. It happens swiftly and terribly. The ancients gave it a name, this culling process that blackens the world. They named it after a wasting disease that occurs in once-healthy groves of trees. They called it the Blight. ~ Jeff Wheeler

Everything you do or say interests me."
"Really," she said skeptically. "What about Lord Westcliff's claim that I'm shallow and self-absorbed?"
As she faced him, Simon braced one hand on the wall near her head and leaned over her protectively. His voice was very soft. "He doesn't know you."
"And you do?"
"Yes, I know you." He reached out to finger a tendril of damp hair that clung to her neck. "You guard yourself carefully. You don't like to depend on anyone. You're determined and strong-willed, and you're decided in your opinions. Not to mention stubborn. But never self-absorbed. And anyone with your intelligence could never be called shallow. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I think young adults get a bad rap for being self-absorbed and self-centered. My experience going around the United States and speaking in schools is that teenagers here are very interested in the fate of their peers around the world. ~ Patricia McCormick

We don't know ourselves, we knowledgeable people - we are personally ignorant
about ourselves. And there's good reason for that. We've never tried to find out who
we are. How could it ever happen that one day we'd discover our own selves? With
justice it's been said that "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also." Our
treasure lies where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always busy with our
knowledge, as if we were born winged creatures - collectors of intellectual honey. In
our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to "bring something
home." As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call "experience" - which
of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time? In these matters, I fear, we've
been "missing the point."
Our hearts have not even been engaged - nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've
been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear
the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at
once wakes up and asks himself "What exactly did that clock strike?" - so we rub
ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed "What
have we really just experienced? And more: "Who are we really?" Then, as I've
mentioned, we count - after the fact - all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of
our experience, our lives, our being - alas! in ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's easy to be a bad ass, it's easy to act like a bad ass, easy to act like a tough guy, it's easy to be a diva, and it's easy to be self absorbed. The list goes on and on but to me, I always just find it more important to be nice and kind. ~ Dwayne Johnson

Rage.

Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede.

Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-against-his-will Hockenberry, dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage might be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer Achilles.

On second though, O Muse, sing nothing of me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit. ~ Dan Simmons

Meant to give a new impulse to the race - to rouse human creatures to new moods, to thrust them into places where they see new things. Men and women are being dragged out of their self-absorbed corners and stirred up and shaken. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Pirate and Osbie Feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpant, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinuous river Thames a drastic strain of burnt orange, to remind a visitor of his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floor-boards - an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the government cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlings of London, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. They flow in rings, concentric rings on the radar screens. The operators call them 'angels. ~ Thomas Pynchon

At times we can be self-absorbed. Lord, help us to open our hearts to others and to serve those who are most vulnerable. ~ Pope Francis

I am talking about self absorbtion. If you think about it, the human race is pretty self absorbed. Racism might be the symptoms of a greater disease, What I mean is, as a human, I am flawed in that it is difficult for me to consider others before myself. It feels like I have a fight against this force, this current within me that more often than not wants to avoid serious issues and wants to please myself, buy things for myself, feed myself, entertain myself, and all that. All I am saying is that if we , as a species could fix our self absorption, we could end a lot of pain in the world. ~ Donald Miller

A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force - the power of wisdom and love in action - is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism. ~ Andrew Harvey

Self esteem is not the same as being self centered, self absorbed or selfish. Self esteem is also not complacency or overconfidence, both of which and set us up for failure. Self esteem is a strong motivator to work hard. Self esteem is related to mental health and happiness. ~ Glenn R. Schiraldi

Note to self
Love is patient; love is kind.
Love doesn't boast or brag.
There's no arrogance in love;
it's never rude, crude, or indecent-it's not self absorbed.
Love isn't easily upset.
Love doesn't tally wrongs.
Love trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what.
Love will never become obsolete.
I'll fight for her.
Thief ~ Tarryn Fisher

Just when had I become so self-absorbed? I was a form of self-preservation, I realized now; I had resolved that ... I could survive Colonel Wood's cruelty if my heart, my mind, had shrunk to a size designed to absorb my own troubles only. ~ Melanie Benjamin