Not Paranoid Quotes & Sayings

They were as different as honesty and truth, but it takes experience to see the dissimilarities. Rocky was friendly, outgoing and boisterous; Charger was sullen, withdrawn and paranoid. Rocky liked people; Charger didn't. Rocky could trust; Charger didn't know the meaning of the word. — Joel M. McMains

In America, they are paranoid about ruining the reputations of people once they are dead and cannot answer back. They have this fascination which to me seems cruel and morbid. I do not want any part of it. — Isabella Rossellini

People worry more about girls, for a good reason: I don't think my parents thought I was going to be raped by a classmate or attacked when I was walking alone in some neighborhood. So it's not just paranoid parents. — Daniel Handler

This is a powerful message from our government: we will not be intimidated by bombs; we will not be intimidated by poison; this is America, if you're a violent, paranoid lunatic, you must use a gun! — Bill Maher

A new poll also shows that a majority of people in Colorado think Hillary Clinton is not trustworthy. Although, that's not saying much coming from the most paranoid state in America. 'Hillary Clinton? She's a cop?' — Jimmy Fallon

Captain, the problem is not that I'm paranoid. The problem is that the universe keeps justifying my paranoia. — John Scalzi

There's a saying, 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.' Well, the reverse is true too. Just because someone's out to get you doesn't mean you're not paranoid. — Susan Ee

If you notice someone talking to a person you can't see, she may be a paranoid schizophrenic. But she may also just be psychic. The fact that you can't see the other half of the conversation doesn't mean it's not truly happening. That — Jodi Picoult

I got a new dog. He's a paranoid retriever. He brings back everything because he's not sure what I threw him. — Steven Wright

People don't remember me. Really. It's not a paranoid thing; I just have this habit of slipping through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much, except I guess that's a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability. — William Goldman

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well. — Richard Hofstadter

Made Men

I see four made men standing, I shall not tell.
The Boss.
The Terrifying.
The Scary.
The Paranoid.

I see three made men standing, I shall not tell.
The Boss.
The Terrifying.
The Scary.

I shall not ever tell. — Sarah Brianne

He had black fingernails and drove a hearse. Everything about him cried out, 'Look at me, look at me,' and when you looked at him, he would snap, 'Who the fuck are you looking at?' If you subscribe to the idea that addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children- paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets. — David Sheff

A paranoid thinks that sinister forces are out to get him, not realizing that they are out to get everybody. — Robert Breault

was Goldman's ideas that were dangerous: her ideal of a just and beautiful society inspired struggles for social change, and her uncompromising presence in public life exposed the hypocrisies of allegedly democratic governance. She had a unique ability to generate coalitions among liberal and radical groups, and among immigrants and native-born citizens, by articulating their common struggles for freedom of speech (including freedom to organize the workplace), right to a fair trial, availability of birth control, right to travel, and an overall spirit of individual freedom. Looking back at Goldman's time from within this gaze, the authorities look extreme, if not paranoid and even ridiculous, for their fervent efforts to silence her rather than simply accept her words as a protected form of speech in American society. — Kathy E. Ferguson

You run the risk of losing anyone who is worth spending time
with, unless you are so paranoid about loss that you choose someone unlosable, somebody who could
not possibly appeal to anybody else at all. — Nick Hornby

It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashnionable or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with the goverment was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates in 1974, at least, are going to have to deal with an angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit. — Hunter S. Thompson

Too many of the men today are mice, not men. Too many of the women of our age are vain, not valiant. We are paranoid of the battle, not productive in it. We are soft where we should be solid, and hard where we should be soft. — Eric Ludy

I love to be scared. Not, 'Hey, I think I smell smoke ... ' scared, but creepy, paranoid, what's-that-out-there-in-the-dark, ghost story scared. It's no surprise that I was the girl who got invited to the slumber parties because I could be counted on to tell a tale to scare the bejesus out of you. — Libba Bray

No, that's not the style of these people,' explained Maxy. 'You shouldn't think of these Bolsheviks as modern politicians. They were religious fanatics. Their Marxism was fanatical; their fervour was semi-Islamic; and they saw themselves as members of a secret military-religious order like the medieval Crusaders or the Knights Templar. They were ruthless, amoral and paranoid. They believed that millions would have to die to create their perfect world. Family, love and friendship were nothing compared to the holy grail. People died of gossip at Stalin's court. For a man like Satinov, secrecy was everything. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I was back to being polite, the well-tempered paranoid. I didn't have much of a choice. If I wasn't polite, they could stick me with those needles or put me back in that little room or take away my visitor privileges or any number of other things. Besides, there didn't seem to be any urgency or anything to be gained by not being polite, the way there had been before. So I was polite. There was time. — Mark Vonnegut

Thus, as historian Soledad Loaeza has argued, the authoritarianism that distinguished Mexico during the second half of the 1960s should not be reduced to a series of "paranoid" acts of a single president (as Enrique Krauze and others have insisted). — Jaime Pensado

You know what's really freaky? Wes segues. "The fact that the psycho in question was the same guy who was after Debbie Marcus."
The whole fiasco with Debbie Marcus had happened at around the same time that I was getting stalked. But instead of taking her seriously, people chalked her stories up to pranks and practical jokes, concluding that Debbie had gotten paranoid as a result.
But there was obviously a lot more to it.
"Actually, its not nearly as freaky as the fact that Camelia decided to go to the psycho's house without even calling us first," Kimmie says.
"I already told you guys, I didn't have my phone."
"And you've obviously never heard of a collect call," Wes says.
"Nor have you heard of nine-one-one." Kimmie's barbell-pierced eyebrow rises high. "Because I hear that's free as well. — Laurie Faria Stolarz

91. Just because you're paranoid, does not mean they're not out to get you. — Kurt Cobain

As but one example, the title of this book comes from a 1968 article that appeared in the prestigious Archives of General Psychiatry, in which psychiatrists Walter Bromberg and Frank Simon described schizophrenia as a "protest psychosis" whereby black men developed "hostile and aggressive feelings" and "delusional anti-whiteness" after listening to the words of Malcolm X, joining the Black Muslims, or aligning with groups that preached militant resistance to white society. According to the authors, the men required psychiatric treatment because their symptoms threatened not only their own sanity, but the social order of white America. Bromberg and Simon argued that black men who "espoused African or Islamic" ideologies, adopted "Islamic names" that were changed in such a way so as to deny "the previous Anglicization of their names" in fact demonstrated a "delusional anti-whiteness" that manifest as "paranoid projections of the Negroes to the Caucasian group."10 — Jonathan M. Metzl

The paranoid one's wards are still active. They keep me several feet from the building."
"But not his car," I said, a smile tugging at my lips. Barrons would go nuts if he knew that V'lane had touched his Viper. And stretched out on it nude? He'd have an aneurysm. — Karen Marie Moning

I'm not paranoid,I just don't trust people. — Rudy Giuliani

As a child actor, you experience a lot of depression and anxiety ... Yes, I went through depression, and it was not comfortable. Yes, I struggle with anxiety and being paranoid, trying to figure out who I am. — Keke Palmer

I'm not a paranoid deranged millionaire.
Goddamit, I'm a billionaire. — Howard Hughes

Prison madness is much the same! Insanity is plentiful in prisons. These days with the drug culture it's not a lot of difference, as a lot of convicts make themselves psychotic and paranoid. Many end up killers, all over petty and minor problems. Where men would once squabble, fight and kill over a ½ oz of bacca they now do the same over a gram of white powder or a bag of brown! — Stephen Richards

I like rock and roll t-shirts, tight jeans, and sneakers or boots. Really just laid back, sort of rock and roll. I'm a sneaker person. I don't really like to wear high heels. I'm always really paranoid when I'm on stage playing guitar that I'm going to trip over one of the cords when I'm prancing around so I have on wedges or shoes that are not too high. — Orianthi

Why did people circle one another, consumed with either fear or envy, when all the they were fearing or envying was illusion? Why did they build psychological fortresses and barriers around themselves that would take a Ph.D. in safe-cracking to get through, which even they could not penetrate from the inside? And once again I compared European society with Aboriginal. The one so archetypally paranoid, grasping, destructive, the other so sane. I didn't want ever to leave this desert. I knew that I would forget. — Robyn Davidson

That better not be what I think it is," Joe mumbled in the dark.
It was. "It's not. Jeez, woman, someone's paranoid. It's my pocket light," he said, wincing. Ah, he was only human after all. It wasn't the first time she got him hard nor would it be the last time. The physical discomfort was a small price to pay to have her in his arms.
"Well, then your flashlight is growing. Jeez, Eric, put a leash on that thing before it stabs me!" she teased.
"But it likes you," he pouted.
She giggled. "I seem to remember a certain tenth grade math class where it liked standing up in front of the entire class."
He sucked in a breath. "Hey, that traumatized me! — R.L. Mathewson

Superstition is thriving. Pedantry is thriving. Sectarianism is thriving. Belief is dying out. To most of your people the jinn are paranoid fantasies who run around causing epilepsy and mental illness. Find me someone to whom the hidden folk are simply real, as described in the Books. You'll be searching a long time. Wonder and awe have gone out of your religions. You are prepared to accept the irrational, but not the transcendent. And that, cousin, is why I can't help you. — G. Willow Wilson

When a man's face contorts in bitterness and hatred, he looks a little insane. When his mood changes from elated to assaultive in the time it takes to turn around, his mental stability seems open to question. When he accuses his partner of plotting to harm him, he seems paranoid. It is no wonder that the partner of an abusive man would come to suspect that he was mentally ill.
Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have been psychologically "normal." Their minds work logically; they understand cause and effect; they don't hallucinate. Their perceptions of most life circumstances are reasonably accurate. They get good reports at work; they do well in school or training programs; and no one other than their partners - and children - thinks that there is anything wrong with them. Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology. — Lundy Bancroft

I realised how paranoid and guarded and not trusting - walled-in - I had become. Not consciously so, but just this armour that I kind of have, protective armour. It's not for my friends or family, but for being.outside in the world, always on guard. — Jennifer Aniston

I'm not paranoid, just prepared. There is a distinct difference and a higher survival rate for the latter." Rainey Bell, from "Molly: House on Fire — R.E. Bradshaw

He did not think he was capable of falling in love who was insane, or paranoid, or confused. So where did that leave him? — Stephen Lloyd Jones

This part concerns the unshakable feeling one gets, one thinks, after the unthinkable and unexplainable happens
the feeling that, if this person can die, and that person can die, and this can happen and that can happen ... well, then what exactly is preventing everything from happening to this person, he around whom everything else happened?
Just as some police
particularly those they dramatize on television
might be familiar with death, and might expect it an any instant
so does the author, possessing a naturally paranoid disposition, compounded by environmental factors that make it seem not only possible but probable that whatever there might be out there that snuffs out life is probably sniffing around for him, that his number is perennially, eternally up, that his draft number is low, that his bingo card is hot, that he has a bull's-eye on his chest and target on his back. It's fun. You'll see. — Dave Eggers

I told her there was hope for the Big Apple yet. "It all depends on our ability to devise a set of robust arguments favoring either scientific materialism or theistic revelation and then communicating the salient points to the Martians in their nonlinguistic language, which was apparently deciphered several years ago by a paranoid schizophrenic named Annie Porlock," I told Valerie. "That's not a sentence you hear every day," she replied. — James Morrow Jr..

I've been blessed with two beautiful daughters. It is amazing how inadequate I can feel in being able to protect, teach, and take care of them. I'm not talking about a paranoid the-world-is-a-dangerous-place kind of way. I mean when they just give me a simple look or ask me something like "Where do stars comes from, Daddy?" I'm opened up in a way I had not thought possible. — Patrick Fabian

Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy ... Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid. — Edward Abbey

Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about "Soviet jewelry" has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what's happening - a proposition I beg leave to doubt. — Molly Ivins

It is easy to dismiss the world as 'irrelevant,' or consumed by 'paranoid anti-Americanism,' but perhaps not wise. — Noam Chomsky

Consider Rutherford playing his thoroughly unlikely hunch about alpha backscattering, Heisenberg remembering an obscure remark of Einstein's and concluding that nature only performed in consonance with his mathematics, Lawrence flipping compulsively through obscure foreign journals: Were this thinking not in the framework of scientific work, it would be considered paranoid. In scientific work, creative thinking demands seeing things not seen previously, or in ways not previously imagined; and this necessitates jumping off from "normal" positions, and taking risks by departing from reality. — Richard Rhodes

I had never had any experience of autism before and I would come home and look at my son, Billy, who is now two, and be absolutely paranoid, particularly because he loves Thomas the Tank Engine, and lots of autys love Thomas. But he is not very good at pointing, and autistic children absolutely love pointing. — Helena Bonham Carter

One of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you're never going to match up and that everybody else's life is going to be better and finer and fuller. That everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught and you had a dental appointment that day, or you were somehow not invited. And the point of great writers like Wilde is that they make that invitation to you. — Stephen Fry

In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to Nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data. Our objective is to abstract patterns from Nature (right-hemisphere thinking), but many proposed patterns do not in fact correspond to the
data. Thus all proposed patterns must be subjected to the sieve of critical analysis (left-hemisphere thinking). — Carl Sagan

"It's a workshop. Nothing but tools."
"So why would it be locked?" I asked.
"I'd love to say it's suspicious," SImon said. "But if this Banks guy had kids around, then I'm not surprised. My dad isn't exactly Mr. Handyman, but he kept a lock on his toolbox. You know parents, Paranoid."
"Yeah," Derek said. "Especially after their son flattens his fingers trying to nail a drawing to the wall."
"Hey, I'm not the genius who suggested it." Simon glanced at me. "Tape wouldn't hold it, and Science Guy explained that the paper was too heavy for the adhesive. So I got some nails."
Derek rolled his eyes. — Kelley Armstrong

If you don't have a tonne of optimism, you're not going to make it ... you won't be able to evangelise to everyone else. On the other hand, if you aren't constantly paranoid about what can go wrong and put plans in place, then you're going to get bitten at some point. — Astro Teller

Well, she kinda sorta has a few dozen plans on getting out of the city." Quiet descended. The Protectors had something similar. Only they limited escape routes to five. Apparently little Victoria was hugely paranoid. "Fine," Wren huffed. "She has fifty-two and a half."
Liam had to bust in then. This was getting too good not to participate. "Fifty-two and a half?" He pushed away from the wall and flopped into a chair across from the irate woman.
"Well, fifty-two complete routes and the half is more of a 'run around in a circle and scream because she's totally fucked in a bad way' plan. Somehow it involves the Goodyear blimp and Jolly Ranchers." The woman grimaced, and he couldn't restrain his wide smile. — Celia Kyle

Okay. how about that time when you smoked all that weed that you thought was laced with something? You fell into the tub, but you refused to get out because you were convinced that the back of your head was going to fall off?
"That third story happened to a guy named Jace in my dorm. Me and Sam and another guy in our hall took turns reading "Paradise Lost" through the locked door. I think it made him more paranoid, though."
"That's not true," he says.
"Well, he *seemed* more paranoid to me," I say. "And he still gets a little weired out when any one mentions angels. — Holly Black

Any historian of warfare knows that it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, we can see how many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination: treason in high places can be found at almost every turning
and in the end the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position, but how it has managed to survive at all. — Richard Hofstadter

What happened in his village that Artemis doesn't want Zarek to know about? (Astrid)
I don't know. She's all paranoid all the time anyway. Afraid akri is going to leave and not come back, which I keep telling him to do. But does he listen? No. 'She's not your concern, Simi. You don't understand, Simi.' I understand, all right. I understand the bitch-goddess needs the Simi to barbecue her until she learns to be nice to people. I think she'd be rather attractive on fire. I could make her look like that old sea hag or something. (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Suburbia is all about private ownership and not having to share, and it leads to a paranoid, defensive mindset. I know this, having grown up in Essex. — Hari Kunzru

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[ ... ]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards "Them" (i.e., anyone who is not one of "Us") is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. — Zeena Schreck

I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid. — Iain Banks

Practically every prime-time program is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad, and I now knew what the formula was. The right sort of mad are people who are a bit madder than we fear we're becoming, and in a recognizable way. We might be anxious but we aren't as anxious as they are. We might be paranoid but we aren't as paranoid as they are. We are entertained by them, and comforted that we're not as mad as they are. — Jon Ronson

We must content ourselves with the mystery, the absurdity, the contradictions, the hostility, but also the generosity that our environment offers us. It's not much, but it's always better than the deadly, defeatist certainty of the paranoid. — Philip K. Dick

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me. — George Murray

Every rep that you take off, somebody else gets another look. That's just how I am. It's not a matter of being paranoid, it's a matter of being confident and not taking anything for granted. — Derrick Brooks

Just because we don't understand why they'd cover up something doesn't mean they aren't," Bobby said, and we both turned to look at him.
"Now you just sound paranoid," I said.
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you," Bobby said with an expression so serious that I couldn't help but laugh. — Amanda Hocking

The reason I do not wear a watch is because I am always on a watch. I just need to ask the person how long they have been watching me.
- the irony of paranoia — Reshma Valliappan

Paul R. Linde in his 1994 book, Of Spirits and Madness: An American Psychiatrist in Africa. "Major mental illness cuts across all cultures," Linde writes. "Amazingly enough, or maybe not, acutely psychotic people in Zimbabwe appear very similar to those in San Francisco. . . . They suffer from disorganized thoughts, delusions, and hallucinations. The content of the symptoms, however, is very much different . . . Zimbabweans do not report hearing auditory hallucinations of Jesus Christ, rather they report hearing those of their ancestor spirits. They are not paranoid about the FBI, rather they are paranoid about witches and sorcerers."1 — Dick Russell

You're aberrated in one way," he said to Will. "I'm aberrated in another. A schizoid (isn't that what you are?) and, from the other side of the world, a paranoid. Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Grey Life. — Aldous Huxley

I'm not paranoid!" I said
Looking fearfully around — Debby Feo

I've always been paranoid about the police, because even when I'm not doing anything illegal I'm thinking about doing something illegal. — Marilyn Manson

I've answered those questions a thousand and one times; I told you I mean what I am saying and I'm not using any code. You're just so unjust and so paranoid. You're taking advantage of me being from a country with a dictatorship. If I were German or Canadian, you wouldn't even have the opportunity to talk to me, nor would you arrest me. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Just because I am paranoid does not mean that someone is not out to get me — Don Darkes

Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations. — Thomas Pynchon

I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones. — Gore Vidal

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

It's a little bit over the top. I feel the same in my head I guess. I was quite a paranoid person anyway, so it doesn't really feed well when people are looking at you. I'm not really in the right job. I don't like having my photo taken. I don't like the attention. — Robert Pattinson

Are people who have been crazy held to unfair standards?
Of course, but it's not in your best interest to complain. If you're paranoid and people are looking at you funny it's best to let it pass. Psychotic people have an uncanny knack for making their own worst dreams come true. Depressing things happen to depressed people way beyond what you would expect from random distribution. — Mark Vonnegut

I'm not paranoid, but I am cautious. I don't drink tea with strangers, I don't fly Aeroflot and I avoid certain countries with close ties to Russia. — Garry Kasparov

We are under [government's] control, and if people don't realize that, they haven't looked around. And if they're not paranoid, they haven't thought about it. — Merle Haggard

I guess you get all my money, I said. And I'm not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre.
Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I'll always take care of you.
I thought, already he's starting to patronize me. Then I thought, already you're starting to get paranoid. — Margaret Atwood

There is no doubt that right-hemisphere intuitive thinking may perceive patterns and connections too difficult for the left hemisphere; but it may also detect patterns where none exist. Skeptical and
critical thinking is not a hallmark of the right hemisphere. And unalloyed right-hemisphere doctrines, particularly when they are invented during new and trying circumstances, may be erroneous or paranoid. — Carl Sagan

In short, conquest is in no sense a necessary sign of higher human development, though conquistadors have always thought otherwise. Any valid concept of organic development must use the primary terms of ecology-cooperation and symbiosis-as well as struggle and conflict, for even predators are part of a food chain, and do not 'conquer' their prey except to eat them. The idea of total conquest is an extrapolation from the existing power system: it indicates, not a desirable end, accomodation, but a pathological aberration, re-enforced by such rewards as this system bestows. As for the climactic notion that "the universe will be man's at last"-what is this but a paranoid fantasy, comparable to the claims of an asylum inmate who imagines that he is Emperor of the World? Such a claim is countless light-years away from reality. — Lewis Mumford

I wonder if I'm being paranoid. I tell myself I'm not, and then ask myself how I can be so sure? I don't know the answer, so I go back to wondering if I am. — Craig Stone

People treat you according to your energy or what you put out there, so what I put out there is very open. I'm not paranoid or scared, I'm open. That's how I treat people, with respect and speak truthfully. — Ziggy Marley

It was not as if he did not know what living in Lagos could do to a woman married to a young and wealthy man, how easy it was to slip into paranoid about 'Lagos girls,' those sophisticated monsters of glamour who swallowed husbands whole, slithering them down their throats. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Most never received messages from solid-state entities, evil or otherwise (although talking to the furniture, overhead light bulbs, lava lamps, and computer screens is commonly reported, these "entities" do not usually answer back) and never experienced paranoid episodes lasting for more ... — Karl Jansen

I think you get mentally ill being homeless. Most of the bag ladies wind up mentally ill pretty quickly - what people would call paranoid - because they are in such danger. I don't know if it's really paranoia because they are in great danger. Terrible things happen to them, and they lose everything. How could they not become at the very least severely depressed? — Alix Kates Shulman

But "knowing the truth" does not come with redemption as a guarantee, nor does a feeling of redemption guarantee an end to a cycle of wrongdoing. Some would even say it is key to maintaining it, insofar as it can work as a reset button - a purge that cleans the slate, without any guarantee of change at the root. Placing all one's eggs in "the logic of exposure," as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has put it (in Touching Feeling), may also simply further the logic of paranoia. "Paranoia places its faith in exposure," Sedgwick observes - which is to say that the exposure of a disturbing fact or situation does not necessarily alter it, but in fact may further the circular conviction that one can never be paranoid enough. — Maggie Nelson

What if history was a gambler, instead of a force in a laboratory experiment, and the boys his ace in the hole? What if history was not a reasonable citizen, but a madman full of paranoid guile and these boys his agents, his big surprise! His own revenge? — Ralph Ellison

You have such an odd relationship to your environment," mused the man. "Such a paranoid relationship. You seem intent on existing in smaller and smaller spaces, filled with more and more gadgets, with the mistaken impression that this will give you more control over your lives. There's something a little impious about it."
"Nothing wrong with gadgets," muttered Alif.
"No, except that they're not magic," said the man, "and a lot of you seem to believe they should be. — G. Willow Wilson

I'm an athlete and I'm black, and a lot of black athletes go broke. I do not want to become a statistic, so maybe I overcompensate. But I'm paranoid. Oprah told me a long time ago, 'You sign every check. Never let anyone sign any checks.' — Serena Williams

No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshippers' description. I don't see how they could survive their own insanity. But it's not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves. Maybe religions are twisted and perverted shadows of truth. Maybe there are forces which shape the world. I myself have never understood why, in a universe so vast, a god would care about something so trivial as worship or human destiny. — Glen Cook

I knew it was coming. I knew they didn't have the nerve.
Three days in and they've got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci-fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation. — Mark E. Smith

If you're not paranoid you've got to be crazy!"
- Michael C. Hughes — Michael C. Hughes

There's evil in the world, all right. Being aware of it makes you a realist, not a paranoid. — Dean Koontz