Claustrophobic Quotes & Sayings

What it was at the time was literally a plea for, to get the pressure off for a while, to give her space to breathe. She was very unhappy. She was feeling pretty claustrophobic. — Anthony Holden

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.' — Julia Glass

It's temporary, Maddie. This is all very temporary.
Great, I thought. My life will suck, temporarily. For the time being, my life is going to be claustrophobic and awful and lonely and desolate and depressing. Temporarily. — Katie Kacvinsky

I'm very claustrophobic. — Brittany Snow

I didn't want to be driving to work everyday and sending out my Starbucks order. I didn't want to be in New York or L.A. I wanted to have space and I wanted to be in a remote place where all of us could just be ourselves and not worry about anyone trying to listen in or get in on that. I wanted to just be comfortable. I feel like being in a big city - as much as I find New York, in particular, very inspiring in a lot of ways - can also be claustrophobic. — Scarlett Johansson

We spent a century closed up within four walls
and a roof.
We are claustrophobic.
We prefer the sun and the wind and the sea
though it bites some of us
who are made of metal, and tears papery hearts. — Catherynne M Valente

You see, I cannot share my space with them. Not only am I severely claustrophobic but I abhor the mass. In general, I do not like people very much. Those I cannot sand are the average ones that eat with their hands out of plastic plates and travel in buses to work. I am horrified of them.
Mr. Wesley — Nina -

I think about dying but I dont want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it. — Matty Healy

I have a fear of heights and I'm claustrophobic. — Kunal Nayyar

The chowdry, or burqa
the Saudi, North African, and Central Asian version of the head, face, and body shroud
is a sensory deprivation isolation chamber. It is claustrophobic, may lead to anxiety and depression, and reinforces a woman's already low self-esteem. It may also lead to vitamin D deficiency diseases such as osteoporosis and heart disease. Sensory deprivation officially constitutes torture and is practiced as such in the world's prisons. — Phyllis Chesler

She once complained that her stories were like 'birds bred in cages,' but that concentrated atmosphere, that claustrophobic hothouse of emotion, was her talent. Her stories were little masterpieces of compression: she succinctly contained whole lifetimes in a few pages, every moment loaded with as much as it could bear. — Katie Roiphe

merrymaking. Yes, Katie would enjoy America, Frances thought as she put on her coat and her hat; in fact, America would enjoy Katie. She left her apartment block and, crossing the road, walked the short distance to the Ninth Avenue Elevated line at South Ferry. Although the elevated line took longer, she preferred not to take the subway system, being slightly claustrophobic. The idea of speeding along in a small underground train made her feel dizzy, so she preferred to travel aboveground by the El for her day of work as a domestic at the Walker-Browns' residence. As she took her familiar journey north that morning, along Greenwich Street and Battery Place to Gansevoort Street in lower Manhattan and on to Ninth Avenue — Hazel Gaynor

Sadness was so claustrophobic. — Kiran Desai

'Trilogy' was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn't left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that's probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that's what my life felt like. It felt like one long song. — The Weeknd

That image - of a little child being suffocated, or almost suffocated, by others who thought the whole thing was a game - melded with the furtive nocturnal slugs, and my solitary pacing and singing, and the separate, claustrophobic stairway, and the charmless abstract painting, and the gold-framed mirror, and the slithery green satin bedspread, and became inseperable from them. It wasn't a cheerful composite. As a memory, it is more like a fog bank than a sunlit meadow.
Yet I think of that period as having been a happy time in my life.
Happy is the wrong word. Important. — Margaret Atwood

I really wouldn't want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there, simple things like smells and the British sense of humor. — Jonny Lee Miller

Overpopulated fiction can be so confusing that readers put the story down. Under-populated novels can seem claustrophobic or boring. You want the right number of characters for your particular work. — Nancy Kress

I've always been shy, but in New Orleans there were times my shyness would cause me actual physical pain. I'd get so claustrophobic around people that I'd bend over from the sickness in my stomach. That's not a good way to be when you're famous, obviously. — Ricky Williams

It's just as well I'm not claustrophobic. Even so, being held captive in a bottle was not how I'd planned to spend my weekend. It was also one of the most undignified positions I've ever been in; a water sprite can be squished down pretty small, but it doesn't mean we enjoy the process. — Deborah Jay

In spite of its nine-foot ceilings, the mahogany wainscoting and warped floorboards made the antiquated house feel claustrophobic, a sailing ship lost at sea, forever rolling this way and that. — Kelly Oliver

It was an intensely lonely moment, like all of eighth grade condensed into one claustrophobic second. — Lisa Rowe Fraustino

In a fight against Juggernaut and Cassidy in their spacious castle basement, Cassidy mentions the word 'tomb' to the X-Men. That's all it took to send Storm into a claustrophobic fit that leaves her in a heap on the floor for three straight issues. Imagine if he would have said 'Small Closet' or 'Size 2 Jeans.' — Seanbaby

I'm a really claustrophobic person to begin with. I hate elevators, especially crammed elevators. I get really scared. So I think that it's very definitely scary when girls are all around me and I can't go anywhere. At the same time, I guess I got to get used to it, you know what I mean? — Justin Bieber

I need relationships, but sometimes when I am in one I feel claustrophobic. It is about feeling that I still have my freedom, that I have choices. I don't look back on the past because I like to live in the present. I know this makes some people think I probably never cared, but I need my freedom and I like to keep moving. — Juliette Binoche

Los Angeles is more hospitable to writers [Than NY]. It's less claustrophobic. It feels more unpredictable and dangerous, and the landscape is less structured. You see coyotes lurking all over the place. It just feels wilder and more dangerous. — Nick Antosca

It started off really ... claustrophobic. I feel like I was really really protected. Really guarded with myself. I feel like they [Def Jam] were giving me the blueprint and I couldn't get with that — Rihanna

Images of broken light dance behind my eyelids. How could this giant lamp compare to the sun?
Everything is wrong here. Shattered. Broken.
Like the light.
Like me.
I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one.
I am surrounded by walls.
I have just replaced one box for another. — Beth Revis

Contemporary movies just drive me crazy. The violence and the sentimentality and the spiritual materialism and Theism and the incredible indulgence in ignorance is so claustrophobic. — Anne Waldman

I don't get claustrophobic. — Ian Ziering

New York and LA are both great places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live in either of them now. I find New York extremely claustrophobic and dirty. LA is quite a nice place. But there's no hustle and bustle, no street life. — Jonny Lee Miller

If I had to model clothes in a time period other than the 21st century, I think I'd like to model way back when they just wore skin loincloths. That would be best suited for me - better than corsets. I'm quite claustrophobic. — Lara Stone

Space is something that you have to define. Otherwise, it is like anxiety, which is too vague. A fear is something specific. I like claustrophobic spaces, because at least then you know your limits. — Louise Bourgeois

There are still too many people out there who are claustrophobic. On easyCruise, we are going to open up as many cabins as we can. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

They had ganged up on her, in the claustrophobic, loving way of families, and she wanted no more of it. — Gregory Maguire

When you're reading, you're laughing and not quite noticing what's happening. One second you're still kind of chuckling, and then all of sudden you're in the third act of the book and in this very dark and claustrophobic place. — Moshe Kasher

I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things. — Lily King

A life without passion is bland and fake. It's like an eagle that trades it's wings for a shell so that it can crawl around like a turtle because it was afraid to fly. You will always feel claustrophobic inside a shell that you don't belong in. Turtles have their own unique advantages, but if you are an eagle, you are meant to fly! — David A. Hunter

In the cocoon, there is no idea of light at all, until we experience some longing for openness, some longing for something other than the smell of our own sweat. When we examine that comfortable darkness - look at it, smell it, feel it - we find it is claustrophobic. — Chogyam Trungpa

As long as I'm in your heart, I'll never truly die.' Ha! Please don't keep me trapped in your heart after I die, girl. I get claustrophobic. — Brent Weeks

He had fled the claustrophobic confines of his family. He'd successfully kept Jan Burres and Wayne Westerberg at arm's length, flitting out of their lives before anything was expected of him. And now he'd slipped painlessly out of Ron Franz's life as well. — Jon Krakauer

Her work failed her. She had reached a desperate, claustrophobic stage of being imprisoned halfway in a novel: there was too much behind her for her to retreat and not a glimmer of light ahead. She sat for hours without writing, staring at the last few wrods on the page, seeing no significance in them. Her characters fell into frozen poses, speech died on their lips: they had sat at a banquet for weeks and she had not the power to bring them to their feet again. — Elizabeth Taylor

Lives that are so conspicuous have a claustrophobic feeling. Once you're in charge of running a country, you're under scrutiny all the time. That's a trap. — Kathryn Harrison

In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her. — Nancy Willard

I've got to be by trees, otherwise I get claustrophobic. — Liam Gallagher

If you've ever thought, 'The new Times Square is delightful but would be even better if it were more claustrophobic and nearly impossible to leave', the Aguas Calientes is calling your name — Mark Adams

Airports are torture chambers if you're claustrophobic. — Jennifer E. Smith

It'd be nice to feel that claustrophobic feeling or the anxiety that the film Melancholia produces, but for me I look at it and think about what I was doing that day, where we shot it ... It's kind of like a weird memory. It's more a photo album of memories than being able to feel connected to myself. It's not easy to do. — Kirsten Dunst

I'm not a claustrophobe, but you don't need to be to feel claustrophobic inside an MRI. It's like being buried alive. — Billy Collins

I get claustrophobic in a harness. I'd be a terrible superhero. — Kelly Macdonald

I've never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition. — Mike White

The thought of being in space, and kind of enclosed, I find would be very claustrophobic. I think I would panic in that situation. — Sean Bean

Doing some of the 'Lord Of The Rings' press junkets got a bit claustrophobic. — Ian McKellen

I'm quite claustrophobic, and I don't like everyone crowding around and shouting the same questions. — Niall Horan

The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you, you'd feel claustrophobic pretty quickly. It's a boundary violation. — Caroline Knapp

I hate elevators. I'm claustrophobic so for me to be in an elevator or small spaces is probably the worst thing on earth. — Aino Jawo

I've usually never felt comfortable shooting until things were kind of claustrophobic, but ballet dancers need a lot of space, so the sets that I designed had to be big. Normally, I'd design a kitchen that was half the size of a normal kitchen, just to make everything feel kind of womb-like, but the kitchen in a ballet would have to be like 100 feet wide and just as long. — Guy Maddin

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now. — David Hockney

I like stripper shoes. I like being tall because I'm claustrophobic. — Jessie J.

The winters are too long, and there's only one airline, so it's difficult to escape when you feel frustrated or claustrophobic. The audience for our films isn't very large, so it's difficult to support an industry. But, Iceland is beautiful. Sometimes it's hard to imagine living anywhere else. — Baltasar Kormakur

I have this recurring nightmare in which I have to move back in with my old college roommates. I'll admit, that's what I was expecting to find at Oneida. The 19th century equivalent of sharing a house with the friend who brought home a crazy drifter to sleep on our couch - a man who claimed the local car dealership was built out of 'needles nourishing the earth'. The week before I went to Oneida, I had that claustrophobic dream again - that I had to move back in with the girl who claimed to enjoy baking and always promised tomorrow was going to be 'Muffin Day!' even though tomorrow was never Muffin Day. It was Muffin Day maybe once. — Sarah Vowell

I have crazy claustrophobic dreams, weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down - oh my God, it's a casket. Just freaky stuff like that. — Dave Grohl

Being carefree, you can fit in anywhere. If you're not carefree you keep on bumping up against things. Your life becomes so narrow, so tight; it gets very claustrophobic. Carefree means being wide open from within, not constricted. Carefree doesn't mean careless. It is not that you don't care about others, not that you don't have compassion or are unfriendly. Carefree is being really simple, from the inside. Dignity is not conceit but rather what shines forth from this carefree confidence. — Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Celebrate those who have the courage to be second, because I do think that often there really is this claustrophobic pressure to innovate instead of to adapt. — Chelsea Clinton

I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert. — Bruce Crown

I enjoy a four-seasonal climate and wide-open spaces, so being on an island 2,500 miles into the South Pacific made me feel a little claustrophobic. — Matthew Fox

I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people. — Bat For Lashes

I was fed up with the situation I found myself in in the 1960s. I didn't like being a barrister's wife and going out to dinner with other professional people and dealing with middle class life. It seemed claustrophobic. — Caryl Churchill

A game like 'Myst' may be a gorgeous slide show that preserves its beauty at the expense of speed. A game like 'Doom' sacrifices almost everything for action. But the eye soon adjusts: the degree of detail more than adequately conveys infinite claustrophobic labyrinths populated by howling monsters. — Marc Laidlaw

Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience. — Ian McEwan

I'm claustrophobic. — Michael Keaton

The idea of playing a character for even two years, to me feels claustrophobic - only because I want to play a lot of different people. — Hilary Swank

At first it was exhilarating but when I realized it wasn't going away, it became scary and claustrophobic. Fame is a weird thing. — Sharon Stone

It is a strange world, Oxford - quite claustrophobic. I was often glad I was only there for eight weeks at a time. — Samantha Shannon

You know, most boys would enjoy being trapped in close quarters with a girl." I roll my eyes.
"Not claustrophobic people, Tris. — Veronica Roth

I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you. — Annie Leibovitz

I'm claustrophobic. I can't go into haunted houses. They have these tight, dark, enclosed space. I freak out. That's my phobia. It gets me out of stuff. Someone asks me to do something and I tell them I can't because I'm claustrophobic. — Mark Consuelos

I think I'm a very solitary person. To actually not be anonymous is a bit claustrophobic for me. — Ani DiFranco

I hated living in the small and claustrophobic atmosphere of my house. It didn't feel like home anymore. I felt like an unwanted guest. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

It was gorgeous and claustrophobic. I loved it and I always wanted to escape. — Emily St. John Mandel

I think you tend to try, during the time you've got off, to forget about the film. It was such a total world. I mean, the sets were claustrophobic, and as soon as you were on there, you were right back into it. — Rosamund Pike

I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic, and the others either give me a stiff neck or lockjaw. — Tallulah Bankhead

I'm unbelievably claustrophobic, and I have really bad anxiety. There were a few moment when I was very dramatic and thought, 'I'm not going to live through this. I'm going to hyperventilate and just die. Right here in jail.' — Shannen Doherty

Wanting to fall in love and being totally unable to trust, hungering for connection and always finding it claustrophobic. — Eve Ensler

In certain areas I don't function well and in other areas I function very well. I'm very good professionally. I have good discipline, I'm able to write every day and do films and not go six times over the budget. I mean I'm a coherent person, but I also don't like to go through tunnels when I travel. I'm claustrophobic. — Woody Allen

'The Black Magician Trilogy' was about a conflict between countries and was very limited and almost claustrophobic in its range of settings, while 'The Age of the Five' was about a conflict between continents. — Trudi Canavan

I'm kind of claustrophobic ... It's not even like enclosed spaces. It's like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can't get out. — Dave Grohl

The music began, passages of immense technical complexity fluidly bridging Caravaggio's chiaroscuro with Renoir's impressionism. The gloom and shadows of claustrophobic chambers contrasting with the vibrant radiance of a wide-open landscape. The realism of humanity down to its dirty nails and rotten wounds combined with the fleeting sanguinity of the moment. — Ella Leya

I don't know if it's irrational, and I would never say this before, but I think I'm a little bit agoraphobic when I'm in huge crowds of people. I mean, it's claustrophobic, probably - small spaces and large groups of people, anxiety rises for me. — Taylor Hanson

I'm not very good at being domesticated. I've tried. The domestic life I find claustrophobic - the rituals and habits and patterns. — Ralph Fiennes

It's claustrophobic, and I think it is to do with the amount that we're exposing people to one particular point. — Sean Booth

The first category comprised those for whom books were the only breath of fresh air in their claustrophobic daily lives. His favorite customers. They — Nina George

'The Oath' seems like the perfect project for me, coming off the back of a big-scale adventure film like 'Everest.' I want to delve into an intimate, dark and psychological world where the characters are claustrophobic. — Baltasar Kormakur

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington. — David Hockney

After the make-up process, I was like, "I never want to do a sci-fi movie where I'm in make-up for seven months." It's interesting. It was my first time ever getting prosthetics. They put this goopy stuff all over your head and they tell you it's like a facial, but it's actually very claustrophobic. All they have are these places where your nostrils are and I kept thinking that they were closing up, but they were like, "No, we're looking at it." So, they made a mold of my face. — Tinsel Korey

New York is a nice place." "If you like concrete, crowds, and that claustrophobic, closed-in feeling. — Janette Rallison

I became super claustrophobic with Hollywood. I don't like Hollywood. I don't like what it represents. I think that Hollywood is great if you're an actor, actress, established. But for reality people or what people perceive as reality, it's tough. People are constantly discrediting everything you put on camera. — Brody Jenner

Love turned out to be soul-crippling, stomach-turning, weirdly claustrophobic: a sense of endlessness bottled up inside him, endless weight, endless potential, with only the small outlet of a shivering pale girl in a bad rain jacket to escape through. Touching her was the farthest thing from his mind. The impulse was to throw himself at her feet. — Jonathan Franzen

Bridget wondered whether it all came down to the claustrophobic choice between dying beautiful or living ugly. — Ann Brashares

British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography. — Lee Child

Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended. — Eric Maisel