Alfred Bester Quotes

What makes Hulk afraid? It's himself. It's a version of himself that's weak. It's a version of himself that's vulnerable. It's a child inside of him.

There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.

I think we all carry the seeds of our own destruction. You really have to be aware that just because something is good, it doesn't mean it's not going to trigger a self-destructive impulse.

We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.

In the end you will be your own undoing. You can't escape you.

You will find that our enemies are our own kin. It is they who betray us. So learn this most important lesson-in the end, our worst enemy is ourselves

I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles

I am my own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my fundamental humanity.

He has no worse enemy than himself.

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!

I have won important things for myself, but I'm going to destroy them, because I tell myself they have lost their meaning. I know that is not true. I know they are important, and that if I destroy them, I'll be destroying myself, as well.

I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.

To some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies.

Sometimes we are devils to ourselves When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, Presuming on their changeful potency.

I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.

Man is his own worst enemy.

Trying to find comfort in perpetual discomfort has been my life's work.

Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.

She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy you.

From what may anyone be saved? Only from themselves! That is, their individual hell. They dig it with their own desires.

The moment where you know the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you're headed is not the direction you want to go, yet you're going to head that way a while longer cause that's just the kind of person you are.

On one level, I am a total softie, sort of depressed and afraid of losing the people I love or failing them. To disguise that, there's all this harsh, poop-centric, external swagger, full of nastiness. I'm a cloaking device.

I think it's the ego in us that screws us up.

The only thing that someone could say about me that would hurt me would be something that's true that I don't want to be.

Every man is his own worst enemy