J. D. Salinger Quotes

People who talk only of themselves think only of themselves.

In general, I can't stand people who always turn a conversation into something about them. I can't stand it when people are too into themselves.

Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves.

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

People who are wrapped up in themselves make small packages.

Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.

Most people are so stuck in their egos that everything revolves around me, me, and more me. But if you want to be rich in the truest sense of the word, it can't only be about you. It has to include adding value to other people's lives.

You’re a human, you should understand self-obsession.

Egocentric: A person who has his I's too close together.

Strikers are egotists, selfish. We have to be.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

A lot of comedians are selfish.

Racing is a very selfish, self-centred, self-glorifying thing. My wife's life for 14 years was centered around me. It was all about me. It was all for my ego.

There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in its modern sense.

He fell in love with himself at first sight, and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Self-love seems so often unrequited.

I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later.

Egotism is not a good quality. It's not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn't be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn't be tolerated in a movie director.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don't live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.

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.