John Gardner Quotes

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.

I have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so I'm definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what they're like when you take their preferred substance away.

If you're not careful, you can fall into a destructive cycle of self-pity.

Hatred is nothing but a form of cancer, and it will eat you up.

I'm incredibly self-destructive.

I don't think you're human unless you go through some [self-destructi on].

Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes.

Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.

I drink to feel / I smoke to breathe / Just look what love / Has done to me

I am a cigarette with a body attached to it

If you allow your mind to carp at all and sundry, it will turn against itself: the majority of our sorrows are self-inflicted.

Self-pity is the most destructive of all narcotics.

Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was "broken.

Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.

I was their bar freak, they needed me to make themselves feel better. just like, at times, I needed that graveyard.

And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Self-pity is a sin. It is a form of living suicide.

Self pity is a disease which does not kill but corrodes.

The self-hatred that destroys is the waste of unfulfilled promise.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings

Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

Learning is to discover that something is possible. We are using most of our energies for self-destructiv e games, self-preventing games. We prevent ourselves from growing the very moment something unpleasant, something painful comes up. At that moment we become phobic, we run away, we desensitize ourselves. Neurotic suffering is suffering in imagination, suffering in fantasy.

Funny, that no matter where you are in the world, there's always someone eager to help you destroy yourself.