Quotes & Sayings About A Narcissist

I have to pause the video while I corral the dogs in the other room. They howl in protest, and I tell them they are harshing my mellow and Yogi Beef Jerky's going to be pissed.
Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not The Answer — Jen Lancaster

Yes, I am a narcissist. The best, too. — Terrell Owens

I'm not saying parenting cured my narcissism, but it changed me and continues to change me every day. I am now a teeny tiny bit less of a narcissist. Being a parent is a selfless adventure. The worldview of "Take care of yourself first" is no longer logical to a sane person if your baby wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. You can't be like, "What's that? The baby is starving? Eh, forget her, I've got to get some sleep." For me, parenting was literally a wake-up call from my own simple selfishness. In other words, I'm not quite as horrible as I used to be. — Jim Gaffigan

A lot of artists are such narcissists. — Kristen Stewart

I was always too self-centered and irresponsible to have kids. I know that never stopped many others, but I am a narcissist with a conscience. — Debbie Kasper

Don't let a Narcissist, or any other kind of vampire, get away with nonverbal disapproval. Unspoken communication has much more power than mere words because it is ambiguous. If a Narcissist says you did something wrong, you can at least disagree. If he only hints at it, you are left wondering if what you're seeing really means what you think it does, or if the whole thing is somehow your fault, or whatever else you might be imagining. ... Translate rather than pointing the finger. This is the tricky part because it is subtle, but it will make all the difference. An unsubstantiated accusation of an internal state, like, "You're bored," invites defensiveness. A translation, like, "You keep looking at the clock; I'm assuming you're bored," is much harder to deny. A Histrionic might try, but other kinds of vampires will have to concede that they are indeed looking at the clock. — Albert J. Bernstein

what might have looked like courage proved to be a deficit of common sense and an excess of self-importance, too strong a faith in his genius and superiority - not courage at all, but the rash actions of an ordinary narcissist incapable of imagining that he might fail. — Dean Koontz

Hypocrissist: A narcissist who has their head so far up their ass they can't hear the hypocrisy coming out of their mouth. — Joel McDonald

Love yourself' the social horde spouts from on high, mere moments later they frown at a bypassing narcissist. — Kevin Focke

Since narcissism is fueled by a greater need to be admired than to be liked, psychologists might use that fact as a therapeutic lever - stressing to patients that being known as a narcissist will actually cause them to lose the respect and social status they crave. — Jeffrey Kluger

The most decisive and certainly most delicious option for an aggrieved worker in a narcissist's office is simply quitting. Slamming your resignation letter on the boss's desk and striding out to take a better job somewhere else is satisfying and in both its finality and its totality. Instantly the feared figure is stripped of all power, reduced to a person of utter inconsequence in your life. Not only does this spell immediate freedom for the exiting employee, it can also contribute to the long-term decline of the boss. — Jeffrey Kluger

But love doesn't make a mean drunk not a mean drunk or a narcissist not a narcissist or a jackass not a jackass. — Cheryl Strayed

The narcissist, cut off from her spirituality, is one who spends unquantifiable energy supporting and maintaining and utterly and completely fake self, in denial of one's true self, trading it for glamour to compensate for a core of being that is simply wracked,a deep dark cold void; using and abusing others to maintain and sustain the false state. this fake self is contrived in absentia from the connectivity that even the most unaware take for granted. The narcissist doesn't see other human beings. — Stacey Scott Mae

Muhammad was a narcissist and Muslims, by having entered into his bubble universe have become narcissists by extension. More precisely, they are reverse narcissists. A commonly used term for reverse narcissist is co-dependent. — Ali Sina

Look at all this. It's fantastic. A hundred thousand worlds. What I love most, because I'm a hideous narcissist, is knowing many of these worlds are mine. You know what all of this is, don't you? This is the immune system of the human soul. Superheroes, space rangers, time cowboys, they are the T cells of the spirit. They were always here to save us. We made them to save us. — Bob Proehl

He is not simply looking into the mirror because he is transfixed by what he sees. Rather, the artist's success depends as much as anything on his powers of detachment, on de-narcissizing himself ... Freud ... studied his own dreams not because he was a "narcissist," but because he was a student of dreams. And whose were at once the least and most accessible of dreams, if not his own? — Philip Roth

Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less. — Thomas Szasz

Getting married and becoming the father of young children has taught me that I am a narcissist. The good news is that I am a really great, really important, and really special narcissist. — Jim Gaffigan

a fully flowered narcissist. — Russell Banks

These are often the children of overbearing narcissistic parents who cannot tolerate the teenager's growing need for separateness and threaten the child with psychological or actual abandonment as a punishment for exercising independence. The child considers the risks and decides prematurely to do what is expected, becoming a doctor. . .without first engaging in a journey of self-discovery. When the parents' or culture's roles and values are adopted wholesale and without examination, the process of establishing a personal identity is short-circuited. Some of these individuals rework this struggle more successfully later in life, while others are never free from the narcissistic web and only feel good when they are pleasing someone other than themselves. — Sandy Hotchkiss

The moral narcissist's extreme humility masked a dreadful pride. Ordinary people could accept that they had faults; the moral narcissist could not. — Larissa MacFarquhar

... our favorite Sayings from Ryke Meadows.
My favorite: I fucking love you.
Willow's: I don't fucking understand Tumblr.
Lo's: Fuck you, you fucking fuck.
Lily's: Fucking fantastic.
Rose's: No means no. Better yet, fuck no.
Connor's: Connor Cobalt is a fucking narcissist. — Krista Ritchie

You will never get the truth out of a Narcissist. The closest you will ever come is a story that either makes them the victim or the hero, but never the villain. — Shannon L. Alder

In a narcissist's world you are not their one and only. You are an extension of that person and last place in their mind, while they secure back up narcissistic supply. — Shannon L. Alder

I'm not a narcissist, but I definitely have gotten enough explosive narcissistic shrapnel from my father. I'm sort of wired that way, but I don't feel that I'm pathological, so all I can pull from is my own existence and my knowledge. — Marc Maron

A narcissist, even in pretty packaging, was still a self-serving bastard, the pretty face might fool for a moment, but the ugly truth deep down comes as a bigger blow, the narcissist wants to remain in control by keeping you confused, anxious, scared and apologetic. — V. Theia

unscathed. As a victim, you might be taken to the point of not wanting to live anymore due to the loss of the soul mate illusion. Just know this, if you were to die, the Narcissist may have a slight feeling sorrow for a brief moment (although highly doubtful), but the Narcissist simply — Steve Craig

At best a practitioner of the Cult of Happy will accept in terms of personal accountability is that they were "too negative." So if people won't be accountable for their own actions, there is little reason to believe that they will be accountable for the actions they perpetrate against others. Similar to a narcissist they will, through their own mental engineering, retreat either to their particular "Cult of Happy Dogma" internally, or to the insulating bubble of like minded followers who will offer reinforcement, similar to narcissistic supply, saying, "There's nothing wrong with you, that person is just negative and you don't need that in your life. — Robert Montgomerie

Begin to assess your own parenting. Acknowledging the painful reality that it is impossible to be a child of a narcissist and not be somewhat impaired narcissistically. Anyone raised this way has probably acquired a few traits of narcissism. — Karyl McBride

Am I really just a narcissist,
Cause I wake up to a bowl of lobster bisque? — Rick Ross

I am not a villain.I'm an only-child narcissist monster, but I wish no ill, nor do I wish for world domination; what a hassle that would be! — John Hodgman

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective is often applied to those "liberals" who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the hightest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume. — Gore Vidal

One thing a narcissist doesn't like is to look in a mirror that is in any way genuinely reflective of what's on the other side of it. — Jay Parini

Love is not a contract between two narcissists. — Alain Badiou

I'm totally a narcissist, so I was doing all this performance and having lots of weird ego time, and learning to set aside my love for the ego and find a deeper love for myself and through that seeing myself as one with all beings. And through loving myself, loving all people in the world, that was my cure for narcissism, the only cure. — Larkin Grimm

I've always been a narcissist. — Damian Lewis

Maybe we ought to look at a guy's response to our microwave from now on." Aunt Annie said.
Really." Mom said. "The narcissist looks at his reflection in it. The OCD guy thinks you don't keep it clean enough.The antisocial
"
Puts his fist through it because it reminds him of his father." Annie said. She'd read all of mom's books, too.
And the paranoid one would be jealous of the amount of time you spend cooking." Mom said
Were you using that microwave again? Is something going on between the two of you? I caught you looking right at its clock." Annie said. — Deb Caletti

What is most difficult is when the large part of me that is a narcissist grows weary and is overtaken by the self-loathing part that always lurks in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to shine. — Greg Fitzsimmons

Bill Clinton wanted to survive. And Bill Clinton wanted to thrive, not just for himself, although that's primarily what drives Bill Clinton. He's a classic narcissist. So of course he wanted to thrive and succeed. But he also wanted America to thrive and succeed, which is why he worked with a Republican Congress. — Monica Crowley

The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict. — Sam Vaknin

To sell out the kingdom of heaven for power is a devil's bargain. It is the bargain that the narcissist makes. — Alexander Lowen

I was a solipsist and a narcissist and much too arrogant. I have a lot more compassion now, but it took a long time. — Andrew Sarris

You're human. You'll screw up. Denying that is crazy. Forgiving yourself has all the benefits of self-esteem without making you a narcissist that's out of touch with reality. — David D. Burns

I have changed my mind on a number of things, including almost everything having to do with Cuba, but the idea that we should be grateful for having been spared, and should shower our gratitude upon the supposed Galahad of Camelot for his gracious lenience in opting not to commit genocide and suicide, seemed a bit creepy. When Kennedy was shot the following year, I knew myself somewhat apart from this supposedly generational trauma in that I felt no particular sense of loss at the passing of such a high-risk narcissist. If I registered any emotion, it was that of mild relief. — Christopher Hitchens

NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER According to James Masterson in The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders, the main clinical characteristics of the narcissistic personality disorder are: Grandiosity, extreme self-involvement, and lack of interest and empathy for others, in spite of the pursuit of others to obtain admiration and approval. The narcissist is endlessly motivated to seek perfection in everything he does. Such a personality is driven to the acquisition of wealth, power and beauty and the need to find others who will mirror and admire his grandiosity. Underneath this external facade there is an emptiness filled with envy and rage. The core of this emptiness is internalized shame. — John Bradshaw

Every writer, without exception, is a masochist, a sadist, a peeping Tom, an exhibitionist, a narcissist, an 'injustice collector' and a depressed person constantly haunted by fears of unproductivity. — Edmund Bergler

The subject of a piece of writing has not suffered the tension and anxiety endured by the subject of the "Eichmann experiment" (as it has been called) - on the contrary, he has been on a sort of narcissist's holiday during the period of interviews - but when the moment of peripeteia comes, he is confronted with the same mortifying spectacle of himself flunking a test of character he did not know he was taking. — Janet Malcolm

The same goes for Edward Monkford. Yes, based on what you've told me, it seems Emma was the real narcissist, not him. But there's no doubting he's an extreme controller. What happens when a controller comes up against someone who's out of control? The combination could be explosive. — J.P. Delaney

It is not difficult to destroy Islam. Islam is the pumped up ego of a megalomaniac psychopath. Muhammad was a narcissist madman. Just as a huge balloon can be deflated by a small needle, all it takes to make Islam explode is to ridicule its loony inventor and its brainless followers. — Ali Sina

You're universally liked because you're such a black hole in space. You don't have any real traits. You're sympa, at least as much as a narcissist can be, but that means nothing. You're beautiful and everybody projects onto you what they're looking for, which is easy to do since you don't stand for anything definite. You're a black hole in space. — Edmund White

I'm a failed narcissist. — Rabih Alameddine

To any survivor who may be doubting whether what they've experienced is truly abuse, remember that emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse will never be, and should never be, considered part of the messy equation of a normal relationship. As both metal health professionals and survivors can attest to, the traumatic highs and lows of being with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath are not the natural highs and lows of regular relationships. That suggestion is quite damaging to society and to survivors all around the world. — Shahida Arabi

As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest. — Nate Ruess

When a Narcissist is victimizing a person, the abused becomes someone they are not and behave in ways out of the norm. Where some may view the behavior as childish or immature, it is actually a person fighting to hang onto his or her sanity. He or she feels as if they are going crazy and those on the outside view them as such. This is what it is to love a Narcissist. The story can and will be melodramatic and confusing at times, but this is real life, and is what goes on in the mind of a person being victimized by a sick and twisted individual hell bent on destroying love. — Steven Craig

It is not worthiness the Narcissist feels when he or she communicates "I deserve." Narcissistic entitlement has nothing to do with genuine self-esteem, which comes from real accomplishment and being true to one's own ideals. Individuals who feel entitled to respect without giving it in return, or who expect rewards without effort, or a life free of discomfort, are forfeiting any power they might have to shape their own destiny. They assume an essentially passive role and count on outside forces to make them happy. When what they expect doesn't happen, they feel impotent. By claiming entitlement, they demand to live in the fantasy world of the one-year-old child. No wonder they're enraged.

Entitlement and the rage that comes with it are tip-offs to the arrest in healthy development that is narcissism. — Sandy Hotchkiss

The beauty of compassion and acceptance is this: it neutralizes the attachment you feel to the n, to the pain and the hurt of the relationship. If we stop throwing energy at the hurt and pain (and narcissist, even simply by continuing to fume about what happened), the power of the pain slowly fades. As we said earlier, many believe an n is "in love" with the self, but it is really a fleeting and desperate attachment to an illusion of self that they have. Beneath this facade is a deep self-loathing and fear that fills the n. — Meredith Resnick

Call it egotistical or narcissist, but I think that's what we all look for in books - the right stories that help us make sense of the world that we, on a very personal level, live in every day. — John Corey Whaley

And then there was that stupid social networking system, how it had just seemed like the most convenient vessel for the average narcissist. How I'd despised those who couldn't eat a meal without prodding through their glowing portable Internet devices, searching for some tasty piece of gossip, or perhaps just something to complain about.
But that social network had become an overnight epidemic - I'd watched as the daily ways in which we'd lived our lives became molded to fit this shallow instrument. It was a vast change - whether it was social evolution or de- evolution, I wasn't quite sure; but before I knew it, by society's standards, it was I that had become the social leper. — Noah Fregger

The Hindu saint Ramakrishna said that when a man becomes a saint, followers swarm to him as wasps to honey. Because he had to become holy to achieve his charisma, a saint won't misuse that power, that control over others. But if a common man, a volk, with no saintly quality, with in fact an inflated ego, a narcissist, should tap into this magnetic current or whatever, he could draw legions to him ... and lead the world to ruin. Bibi — Dean Koontz

The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one's getting too entangled with them. Treated from arm's length, the object can issue no challenge to the self. According to Freud, this is precisely the condition of the narcissist: he treats objects as props for his fragile ego and has an uncertain grasp of them as having a reality of their own. The clearest contrast to the narcissist that I can think of is the repairman, who must subordinate himself to the broken washing machine, listen to it with patience, notice its symptoms, and then act accordingly. He cannot treat it abstractly; the kind of agency he exhibits is not at all magical. — Matthew B. Crawford

A narcissist never has your back. — Zari L. Ballard

Children happen to be more attached to the female narcissist due to the way our society is still structured and to the fact that women are the ones to give birth and to serve as primary caretakers. It is much easier for a woman to think of her children as her extensions because they once indeed were her physical extensions and because her on-going interaction with them is both more intensive and more extensive.
[The] male narcissist is more likely to regard his children as a nuisance than as a Source of Narcissistic Supply - especially as they grow older and become autonomous.
With less alternatives than men, the narcissistic woman fights to maintain her most reliable Source of Supply: her children. Through insidious indoctrination, guilt-formation, emotional sanctions and blackmail, deprivation and other psychological mechanisms, she tries to induce in her offspring dependence which cannot easily be unraveled. — Sam Vaknin

I am a recovering narcissist. I thought narcissism was about self-love till someone told me there is a flip side to it. It is actually drearier than self-love; it is unrequited self-love. — Emily Levine

I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously. — Anne Lamott

Maybe, the lesson we can all learn from the inner sadness of a Narcissist is to see through our own fabrications, our own illusions so that we can be set free to be real once more. — Shannon L. Alder

Narcissism has existed for a long time; social media is just a new outlet to express it. Anybody who is going to record themselves and put that on the Internet, hoping people will watch, there is a degree to which that exists, yeah. I don't know if I would call myself a narcissist. I don't necessarily identify with that label. — Tyler Oakley

I used to play a narcissistic conservative pundit. Now I'm just a narcissist. — Stephen Colbert

You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It's easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not rawtalent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. — Ryan Holiday

Withhold admiration from a narcissist and be disliked. Give it and be treated with indifference. — Mason Cooley

Bezos personifies a new breed of executive that arose with the emergence of the game-changing technologies in the 1980s and 1990s ... a 'productive narcissist' ... These executives have big enough egos to make up seemingly random rules of business leadership. However, unlike other narcissists, they get the job done. — Richard L. Brandt

This man was gorgeous. I'm mentioning this because women live their lives secretly waiting for their lives to become movies. We act like men are the ones shallow enough to desire an unending stream of beautiful women but really, if a charismatic narcissist beautiful bad boy man actually desires us, seems to choose us, we go to pieces. We suddenly feel like we are finally in that movie rather than a life. Just what we always wanted. To be chosen by the best looking man in the room. Rhett Butler. Even though we are of course smarter and more mature and more together than to ever want that. Or admit it. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise.There's not anyone of independent stature around him. There was in the first term, because he needed them to prop him up. But now that he entered a second term, he's the master of the universe, so there's nobody around him. He is impervious to outside advice, real advice that he takes. — Charles Krauthammer

In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is God's gift to the world. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is God's gift to the collective. — Christopher Lasch

Often the narcissist believes that other people are "faking it", leveraging emotional displays to achieve a goal. He is convinced that their ostensible "feelings" are grounded in ulterior, non-emotional motives. Faced with other people's genuine emotions, the narcissist becomes suspicious and embarrassed. He feels compelled to avoid emotion-tinged situations, or worse, experiences surges of almost uncontrollable aggression in the presence of expressed sentiments. They remind him how imperfect he is and how poorly equipped. — Sam Vaknin

My wife thinks I'm a narcissist, but I just think it's hilarious going on YouTube and seeing these covers. There are so many of them - literally hundreds! It's flattering. — Charles Kelley

This was the problem of being a narcissist: No one appreciated you as much as you knew you deserved." Louis Piper, Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, The Morning Star. — Eric Nylund

I think it's very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way. — Alan Ball

If anybody studying psychology wants a concrete example of what a narcissist looks like, I advise them to consider any man who cheats on his wife. These guys are the textbook me-firsters, the ones who think the rules don't apply to them, the ones who tell themselves as long as she doesn't know, there's no harm done. No woman needs to sleep with these guys. There are so many single self-absorbed narcissists who will fuck you poorly. — Julie Klausner

The pain of the narcissist is that, to him, everything is really a threat. What doesn't surrender in reverence is blasphemous to a high opinion of oneself - the burden of self-importance. The narcissist reconstructs his own law of gravity which states that all things and all creatures must adhere to his personal satisfaction, but when they do not, the pain is far more intense than it is for one who is free from the clamors of 'I'. — Criss Jami

The idea that guys should walk into a bar and confidently initiate contact and then seduce a woman based on a short term conversation is a toxic cultural myth that robs guys of self-confidence and that holds them up to an unrealistic standard that they have to become a super-extraverted narcissist in order to 'score with women' — Tucker Max

Women live their lives secretly waiting for their lives to become movies. We act like men are the ones shallow enough to desire an unending stream of beautiful women but really, if a charismatic narcissist beautiful bad boy man actually desires us, seems to choose us, we go to pieces. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I prefer to think of myself as a devout Narcissist.
What does that mean?
If the sun is shining, I thank God. If it rains, I blame him. — Teresa Medeiros

Being a narcissist isn't easy when the question is not of loving your own image, but of recreating the self through deliberate acts of alienation. — Orlan

I like to think I'm not a narcissist, but truth be told, we all have those sides to our character. — Lisa O'Hare

Narcissists (and often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don't talk, or communicate: they fend off, hide and evade . . . [They] perfect the ability of saying nothing in lengthy Castro-like speeches. Their locution is impregnated with first person pronouns ("I", "me", "my", "mine" - aka "high pronoun density").

The ensuing convoluted sentences are .. a lack of commitment elevated to an ideology. The narcissist prefers to wait and see what procrastination brings: postponement of the inevitable leads to the inevitability of postponement as a strategy of survival. — Sam Vaknin

The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation. — Criss Jami

We just didn't get it. We were weakened and exhilarated at the same time. A paranoiac's nightmare! A narcissist's dream! We didn't know how to feel: flattered or raped. Maybe both. We were puzzling at breakneck speed. — Steve Toltz

The narcissist act is not an act. I actually am a narcissist, very much so. My world revolves around me. — Tucker Max

A false image is, of course, a work of art, an idol. And a lie. A narcissist identifies with this image, not his true inner self. So, all he cares about is his image, not what kind of person he really is. Indeed, the latter has no real existence in his world.

In identifying with his image, he's identifying with an ephemeral figment that has but virtual reality, a purely immanent existence as a reflection in the attention shone on him by others. No attention, no image. No image, no self! — Kathy Krajco

I don't know if my mother was a narcissist - or bi-polar or borderline. Those were words she tossed around over the years. — Ariel Gore

With women, there's a basic female instinct of caring deeply about the way they look; women stars have a narcissist complex. — Edith Head

A narcissist with power will attempt to prove in the world only what is already in his head. He can't 'see' otherwise. For him, the 'outside world' is not beyond him and does not question or challenge him and his ideas. He is the world. Others will assent to his distorted worldview, because he is powerful, not because he is believable. If he possesses any reflection, that will be exactly what will gnaw at the narcissist with power most of all: his 'truths' are inauthentic, and he is a human being without integrity. The very narcissism and power he possesses prevent him from an ongoing relationship with the truth, which begins with self-humility and the curiosity this can create in a person. — Sergio Troncoso

Then there is the cosmologist, who views himself as nothing but a manipulation of atoms; his mind configured out of randomness into the tool a vast, blind universe might use to perceive itself. If this is so then truly "all is vanity". What could be more pleasing to the cosmic narcissist than to gaze eternally with a billion eyes into the mirror that is himself? What fault, however, if certain eyes ultimately don't like what they see? — Dan Garfat-Pratt

Every narcissist I have known does this. Always mysterious. Never a straight answer. Always handing you some meaningless vagary (or one that could mean many different things) as if it says something significant. — Kathy Krajco

Fear was a solipsist, a narcissist, blind to everything except itself. — Salman Rushdie

If you loved everything you were writing, you would be deluding yourself or a complete and absolute narcissist. It's not about liking what you write, it's about improving with every word, little by little, exploring your craft, becoming the artist you hope to be one day. And you can only do that by working at it every day. It doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen over a weekend, it is a lifelong pursuit. — Brian Michael Bendis

A narcissist society, in which each person is busy looking out for number one, can build neither brotherhood nor community. Aren't we glad in this Easter season and in all seasons that Jesus did not selfishly look out for number one? No wonder we have been told, 'Thou shalt have no other gods
before me,' and this includes self-worship! (Ex. 20:3; emphasis added). One way or another, the grossly selfish will finally be shattered, whimpering, against the jagged, concrete consequences of their selfishness. — Neal A. Maxwell

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. 'Look at him!' Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, 'That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he's done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!' Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. 'That's not fat,' he declared, punching himself in the stomach, 'that's good healthy meat!' He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks. — Christopher Isherwood

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. — Gore Vidal

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed. — Leo Rosten