Inner Demons Quotes

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself— that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved— what then?

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful, ghostly, unquiet possession for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful perhapses,--those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity?

If people could see the inside of my brain, I would be in prison.

It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.

There aren't demons flying around with horns, people are demons.

It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.

Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters.

Ordinary men live in fear all the time. Didn't you know that? We're afraid of the weather, we're afraid of powerful men, we're afraid of the night and the monsters that lurk in the dark, we're afraid of growing old and of dying. Sometimes we're even afraid of living. Ordinary men are afraid almost every minute of their lives.

You've never met a more flawed guy than me.

There was a reason my first substantial role after rehab was to play a maniac whose personal story ended badly. I knew what it was like to go those dark places. I played a guy who died as a result of his abuse.

Desire, despair, desire. So many monsters.

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

Back to my childhood where those monsters reside. They snack on innocence and dine on self esteem.

I crawled in the bathroom, looked in the mirror and saw the devil. It was me.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them...

I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring

All the great artists had their dark sides. Look at Amy Winehouse or anyone who has achieved a certain level of success. Even Adele, and the people that you wouldn't put in the same category as a gangster rapper. These women have exposed their vulnerabilities, demons, and things that have hurt them.

A dimple on the chin, the devil within.

Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.