Psychological Conflict Quotes

I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write in that idiom.

The ego is not master in its own house.

I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere!

What does it mean when nightmares dream of peace? When shadows wish for light?

I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.

I'm an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

Abysmal vermin that I am, I couldn't of course tell her that it was her incredible mother that I wanted to see again… I knew only as I drove through the cold, night autumn air that somewhere Freud, Sophocles and Eugene O’Neill were laughing.

Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.

Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

Isn't the origin of conflict ego? If there is no ego there is no becoming.

We are by far the most contradictory of all primates. An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

Jealousy fuses megalomania and self-abandonment.

Not treasured wealth, nor the consul's lictor, can dispel the mind's bitter conflicts and the cares that flit, like bats, about your fretted roofs.

He is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon.

It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.

Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.

Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience; the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to tame the pig, but also to render it invisible.

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me, but the chemistry is incredibly simple and very destructive. When we first met, you told me that a disguise is always a self portrait, how true of you, the combination to your safe – your measurements. But this is far more intimate. This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head. You could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you worked for. But you just couldn’t resist it, could you? I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.

Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.

I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I'm crazy. I swear to God I am.

A dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born.

Is the human condition not defined by an endless struggle to control the ego's subterfuges?