#paranoia

[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios--the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about--was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia. ↗

— Adam Gopnik

#fear #hysteria #overreaction #panic #paranoia

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both partners run out of goods. But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason. Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection – the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#paranoia #relationships #love

A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves. ↗

— Dan Savage

#animates #capacity #fear #gay #huge

Being closer to the genesis of this whole period, it captured the importance of the concept of making contact and accurately depicted the paranoia of the time. It's an excellent film. ↗

— Dwight Schultz

#being #captured #closer #concept #contact

Neither had said so, but she could tell. Unless she was just paranoid, living in her head again, but you always lived in your head and you had to go with what you felt. ↗

— Chad Harbach

#art

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government. ↗

— Erik Larson

#fear #germany #nazis #paranoia #tension

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts. ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#having #just #paranoia #sometimes

I'm scared to death of being poor. It's like a fat girl who loses 500 pounds but is always fat inside. I grew up poor and will always feel poor inside. It's my pet paranoia. ↗

— Cher

#being #death #fat #feel #girl

This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault. ↗

— Robert M. Hutchins

#do-it-yourself #fault #got #know #paranoia

I got this idea about being afraid to let go of something and being afraid of sinking into a state of almost anesthesia, where you have to trust other people. Just the paranoia of it all. And it seemed to suit the frenetic track. So I just wrote it out and, you know, said it. ↗

— Nick Rhodes

#afraid #almost #anesthesia #being #being afraid