Narcotic Quotes & Sayings

Oh, yes. I've known kisses so narcotic they made my eyes roll back in my head. For a few weeks one winter I walked around feeling like I had a miniature sun in my heart. — Tim Kreider

Except he and I know that some pain burrows so deep, no narcotic can ever soothe it. It's etched on your bones. It hides in your marrow, like cancer. If the boy survives, the pain is a memory he won't want. — Shaun David Hutchinson

She had forgotten about this, the narcotic of the crowd. This is why you came to hear music. To stop being yourself, to let that thing that you supposedly were go, and just be part of a mob, synchronized by the heavy beat, mesmerized by a singer with big smeary red lips, her spooky chant. — Janet Fitch

The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.
The Professor watched me critically. "That will do," he said. "Already?" I remonstrated. "You took a great deal more from Art." To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied, "He is her lover, her fiance. You have work, much work to do for her and for others, and the present will suffice. — Bram Stoker

Schoolteachers seemed determined to persuade me that 'classic' is a synonym for 'narcotic'. — Russell Baker

When I was in college I had a wisdom tooth pulled, and I was given a prescription for a bottle of narcotic pills that surely have reached the top of the DEA's hit-list by now. I don't remember the name of the pills, nor do I remember how I ended up in Tijuana. It's probably a long story. — Gary Reilly

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.
To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books. — Chuck Palahniuk

Love is like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love. — Paulo Coelho

Faith is the narcotic that fueled the insanity of religion. — C.J. Anderson

There's a German term- heimweh, homesickness. It's a powerful sensation, like a narcotic. A yearning from home, but for something more- a past self, perhaps. A lost self. When I first saw you on the street, Katya, I felt such a sensation ... I have no idea why — Joyce Carol Oates

War is addictive. Indeed, it is the most potent narcotic unleashed by mankind. — Chris Hedges

Travel is no more than a relatively healthy form of narcotic, after all. — Andrzej Stasiuk

Their period in the apartment together had been one of almost narcotic domesticity. — J.G. Ballard

Ego is the world's worst narcotic — Mekael Shane

Storytelling has a narcotic power. — Robert Harris

And he thought then about the Guild - the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword ... and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they'd existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died. — Frank Herbert

I browsed casually, lulled with the smell of novels: paper and glue and magic, mingled with the scent of freshly brewing coffee and the faintest trace of brownies. It was practically narcotic. — Jessica Gadziala

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I'm comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul. — Claude McKay

Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else? — David Levithan

Politics is work. Hiphop is music. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever "going," we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn't "concern" us in the least. — John H. McWhorter

Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him: but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting- room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I slump in my chair, thinking how a narcotic party of one is no party at all. — Elle Lothlorien

My narcotic was what had got me through the war; it was an ability to let my emotions be stirred by only one thing - my love for Helga. This concentration of my emotions on so small an area had begun as a young lover's happy illusion, had developed into a device to keep me from going insane during the war, and had finally become the permanent axis about which my thoughts revolved — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Because of the a priori element in intention, good intentions are so tempting - compared with a successive unfolding in time - and have so often in them some narcotic which develops an inner gaze instead of a resilience that begets energy. — Soren Kierkegaard

By empowering people to initiate a conversation prior to surgery regarding their pain control options, we hope to reduce the incidence of narcotic addiction and all of the unfortunate consequences that surround it. — Kristi Funk

Lettuce, greens and celery, though much eaten, are worse than cabbage, being equally indigestible without the addition of condiments. Besides, the lettuce contains narcotic properties. It is said of Galen, that he used to obtain from a head of it, eaten on going to bed, all the good effects of a dose of opium. — William Alcott

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves. The potion is the sum of one's whole existence. Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and color in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams, and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.
The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.
No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.
But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom ... — Anais Nin

She tries to think, but the monotonous stuttering of the wheels breaks the flow of her thoughts, and the narcotic cowl of sleep tightens over her throbbing forehead - that muffled and yet overpowering railroad-sleep in which one lies rapt and benumbed as though in a shuddering black coal sack made of metal. — Stefan Zweig

Books are a narcotic. — Franz Kafka

With a hoarse curse on his lips, Ashe shuddered against her. The night felt warmer, the air heavier ... richer, as it pressed in on them. Lust spilled through his veins in a thick, decadent slide, more potent than any narcotic as it poured through his system. His tongue flicked against the velvety softness of her lower lip, coaxing her to accept him ... to kiss him back. She shivered, blinking, then relented, her lips parting with a sigh ... inviting him in, and he couldn't resist, sliding his tongue against hers in an explicit kiss that was wet and deep and hungry. — Rhyannon Byrd

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic. — R. Scott Bakker

Narcotic greens narcotic greens like reeling firmaments disclose in their appearing randomness the sweetest means that you or she or any wandering Thales might choose to be wonder-struck with at the moment when we die — Marianne Bluger

There's no narcotic like exhaustion. — Octavia Butler

Srad was a fruit with mildly narcotic properties- tonight the villagers ingested large quantities of it in order to feel the narcotic effects. — Christie Sims

Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning — Forough Farrokhzad

My wakeup call wasn't some light switch of empowerment. From as early as preschool I feared that if I didn't grow up to be the pretty princess men fawned over, I was a failure. That mentality was my disease. It got me raped. It made me feel dirty and devalued because my cherry wasn't popped on a bed of rose petals. It fueled an adolescence juggling starvation and vomiting until my throat bled out and my stomach acid burned through the plumbing. It made me snort coke, smoke meth, and routinely gulp down narcotic petri dishes in hopes of obtaining hallucinogenic intimacy with junkie boyfriends. But most of all, it made me waste my youth chasing, obsessing over, fighting for, worshipping, clinging to, and crying over one after another loser. At some point, I just quit giving a fuck. — Maggie Young

When I was young, I hid under the porch with a star in my throat.
When I got a little older, my mother opened the cupboard to let the fire out.

...

I believe the stories got wet and began to bleed together.
I believe we built the sides of the town too high and the events kept rolling back.
I didn't know that the water was going to keep rising as well,
but if you have any say in the matter, while the boats go down,
I'd like to be on a ladder,
peeking into a loft made narcotic with children,
a dead pool with rolling, living waves. If possible,
I'd like the water to douse the match that's growing out of the bones of my hand. — Catie Rosemurgy

Our goal is to increase awareness about non-narcotic pain control options available before, during, and after surgical procedures that are so effective that needing narcotics postoperatively is dramatically reduced or even eliminated. — Kristi Funk

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it. — Louis Kronenberger

A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labor, which are sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But — Victor Hugo

Prayer is asking God to incarnate, to get dirty in your life. Yes, the eternal God scrubs floors. For sure we know he washes feet. So take Jesus at his word. Ask him. Tell him what you want. Get dirty. Write out your prayer requests; don't mindlessly drift through life on the American narcotic of busyness. If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Seize the corner of his garment and don't let go until he blesses you. He will reshape the day. — Paul E. Miller

Poison or elixir, narcotic or aphrodisiac, whatever it was, this flower, relic of a day in the life of an accidental writer, an inadvertent counterfeiter leaving his traces in code, the birds were coming to try it, performing a dance for no one and flying up toward the moon. — Cesar Aira

By government giveaway programs, individuals are often hurt far more than they are helped. The recipients of these programs become dependent on the government and their dignity is destroyed. Is it compassionate to enslave more and more people by making them a part of the government dependency cycle? I think compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need it. Helping people to become self-sufficient is much more compassionate than drugging them with the narcotic of welfare. — Rush Limbaugh

I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction. — William S. Burroughs

I ran to Joe and pulled him in. I pushed my face into his jacket and breathed in the wool and dry-cleaning. Joe's height was always a narcotic for me, the way my head hit him at the chest. I dug my fingers under his shoulder blades and turned my cheek so my nose touched flesh. The dampness of his clavicle, the tickle of his chest hair. The smell of Joe. My man. — Maria Semple

Hollywood is a narcotic, not a stimulant. It wants to sell you something. Literature wants to tell you something. — Rex Murphy

The whole of the Amazonian narcotic complex, as it's called in the old literature, is based on activation of DMT by one strategy or another. — Terence McKenna

The bonds between people had to be a narcotic. You unwittingly became dependent all the while your heart deteriorates inside out. And then you ended up needing to rely on others and you eventually become unable to do things by yourself.
Then, was it possible that by intending to lend a hand to people that I was actually making them suffer instead? Was I giving birth to people who couldn't stand on their own two feet unless they had help from someone?
Even though we were supposed to teach them how to catch fish and not give them one.
Something that could be easily given to someone was surely a fake. Something that could easily be given away was surely something that could easily be taken away by someone. — Wataru Watari

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use measured language lie's The sad mechanic exercise Like dull narcotic's, numbing pain In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er Like coarsest clothes against the cold But large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I wanted to build a fire with our shadow selves and burn there or be erased by the narcotic of limerence when I turned your face into a fire: a love story. — Melissa Broder

Hope was the light that allowed man to prevail in the worst of circumstances. But it also could become the narcotic of the self-deluded and the naive. — James Lee Burke

Opiates are, by their very nature, about forgetting. When you're in that narcotic haze, memory functions like some mutant projector, a hell-tuned Bell & Howard. As the film goes in one end, at the other end it's immediately eaten by some kind of acid, dissolving the second the events transpire. — Jerry Stahl

I've been in love before, it's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things.You think about the person you love for two minutes then forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love.- By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept — Paulo Coelho

Begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. — Rolf Potts

Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper. — Robert Benchley

The most powerful narcotic in the world is the promise of belonging. — Kalle Lasn

the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as I walked by the shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if those placid waters were drawn on in resistless currents to strange oceans that are not in the world. Silent and sparkling, bright and baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in the opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly into the stream, swirling away horribly — H.P. Lovecraft

The venom," she [Susan] said quietly. "They call it their Kiss."

"I guess I can't blame them. It sounds a lot more romantic than 'narcotic drool. — Jim Butcher

He felt like an addict who, after abusing a narcotic for years, somehow found himself sober, — Ilona Andrews

Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises. — Rolf Potts

I've been in love before. It's like narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can control things. You think about the person for two minutes and forget them for three hours. — Paulo Coelho

Franklin Roosevelt had warned in his 1935 State of the Union address that "continued dependence" on government support "induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. — Arthur C. Brooks

Academy. And what a narcotic the drug of positive feedback — Deon Meyer

Miss Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear. Fear after a time, as we all learned in the blitz, is narcotic, it can lull one by fatigue into sleep, but apprehension nags at the nerves gently and inescapably. We have to learn to live with it. — Patricia Highsmith

I guess that's supposed to be deconstruction's original program, right? People have been under some sort of metaphysical anesthesia, so you dismantle the metaphysics' axioms and prejudices, show it in cross section and reveal the advantages of its abandonment. It's literally aggravating: you awaken them to the fact that they've been unconsciously imbibing some narcotic pharmakon since they were old enough to say "Momma."
-Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993) — David Foster Wallace

"Drugs" are not necessarily narcotics. The narcotic is one type of drug and coffee is a drug ... booze is a drug ... many drugs ... They're all around us. — Hunter S. Thompson

The first time I ever recorded, which was into my boom-box, I was like, 'Wow, check that out.' It sounded great. The narcotic of it was so intense - it was pleasurable. I was like, 'You sound like a band.' Then I ended up spending the rest of my life trying to chase that initial high again. — Ian MacKaye

Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper. — Gerald Early

Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble ... [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality ... a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict. — Eugene H. Peterson

Conviction, no matter how narcotic its depth, simply did not make true. — R. Scott Bakker

Pluralism is a merciful narcotic. — Saki

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job. — Jennifer Arnett

The house fills with the particular atmosphere that accompanies peacefully sleeping children: a rich narcotic silence that creeps down the stairs and twines itself around the table legs. — Harriet Lane

I've jammed enough things up my own ass just trying to come on any amphetamine based narcotic. — Doug Stanhope

Why are online games so addictive? It's mostly the narcotic appeal of 'leveling.' — Clive Thompson

Actually last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little angora crop top told me he was gay a sex addict a narcotic addict a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo. — Helen Fielding

Think of the things killing us as a nation: narcotic drugs, brainless competition, dishonesty, greed, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all
lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy
all of these are addictions of dependent personalities. That is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce. — John Taylor Gatto

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?"
Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. — Helen Fielding

You are like a narcotic plant. — Olga Goa

This man's pure narcotic, delicious and addictive. Don't know how I thought I could walk away from him for good. — Ann Aguirre

Once, when we were wild, sugar intoxicated us, the first narcotic we craved and languished in. We've tamed, refined it, but the juice from a peach still runs like a flash flood. — Stephanie Danler

The brain scans and mood swings of an infatuated lover, scientists have recently discovered, look remarkably similar to the brain scans and mood swings of a cocaine addict - and not surprisingly, as it turns out, because infatuation is an addiction, with measurable chemical effects on the brain. As the anthropologist and infatuation expert Dr. Helen Fisher has explained, infatuated lovers, just like any junkie, will go to unhealthy, humiliating, and even physically dangerous lengths to procure their narcotic. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. — Toni Morrison

Love the great narcotic was the revealer in the alchemist's bottle rendering visible the most untraceable substances.
Love the great narcotic was the agent provocateur exposing all the secret selves to daylight. — Anais Nin

On gym days, I don't get to my desk until 4 in the afternoon, and everything except bedtime and the appointment with the liquid narcotic is pushed back a bit. — Peter Straub

Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings. — Robert Graves

Wishes are an anesthetic to
be used by the unambitious, a
narcotic that dulls their awareness of
their own desperate condition — Jim Rohn

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism. — C. G. Jung

For years I'd been awaiting that overriding urge I'd always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers' strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There's a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: "I'm pregnant." I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother's deepest fear.) (27) — Lionel Shriver

The effect of the consolations of religion may be compared to that of a narcotic. — Sigmund Freud

A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor doctor. The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to your skill. — Martin H. Fischer

First things that a hurting person needs to do is break the habit of using other people as a narcotic to numb the dull aching of an inner void. — T.D. Jakes

It's risky, falling in love."
"I know that," I answered. "I've been in love before. It's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours.
"But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love."
"What a horrible way to put it," he said. — Paulo Coelho

Pride is a powerful narcotic, but it doesn't do much for the auto-immune system. — Stuart Stevens

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea - known to medical science is work. — Thomas Szasz

If only religion were an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast. — Christopher Hitchens

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference. — Charlie Chaplin

THE ALLURE OF Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation. — James Lee Burke