Quotes & Sayings About Paranoia

When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books. — Betsy Lerner

Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I think people are plotting to make me happy. — J.D. Salinger

Paranoia
because why should the conspiracy theorists get to have all the fun? — Jim Butcher

All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was."
"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that. — Douglas Adams

Never let your fear of the unknown and things being too difficult make your choices for you in life. One of the saddest lessons in life is finding out that your fear made the situation worse than what it was and a braver person stole the dream you gave up on. — Shannon L. Alder

Not Exactly True That skin hate is dead. There will never be color blindness in a culture of fear. But when you live afraid of your neighbor, the monster you should most walk in terror of thrives. It starts as a little thing, small enough to burrow into your pores, take up excruciating residence in the dark recesses of your brain. Its name is paranoia, and it spreads like an oil spill, there in the shadows, chokes your humanity. Threatens your soul. — Ellen Hopkins

Roy's key finding was DeBardeleben's criminal sexual sadism. For such offenders, sex and suffering are one and the same. This perversion, or paraphilia, is surprisingly unusual, even among sexual criminals. But those who harbor it are the most dangerous of all aberrant offenders. They are the great white sharks of deviant crime, marked by their wildly complex fantasy worlds, unequaled criminal cunning, paranoia, insatiable sexual hunger, and enormous capacity for destruction." ... "The crimes are fantasies being acted out. The more complex the crime, the more complex the fantasy and the more intelligent the offender.
— Roy Hazelwood

America is in a state of somnolence. It's an avoidance of paranoia through ignoring reality. — John McAfee

Give him the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia. — Terry Pratchett

My Spidey-sense had been tingling since I found the empty car. Sometimes it's not paranoia; it's just the truth. — Laurell K. Hamilton

He pictured both cities simultaneously, as though they hung on the extended arms of the orange clouds. Suspended. Tiny San Francisco dangling to the north: innocent, rich and a little bit silly. The sprawling, demented snake of L.A. to the south. Its fanged mouth wide open, eyes blazing, paralyzed in a lunge of pure paranoia. This was the place to be, he thought. Right here. In the middle. Smack in the belly of California where he could eyeball both from a distance. He could live inside the intestines of this valley while he spied on the brain and the genitals. — Sam Shepard

Paranoia is just another mask for ignorance. The truth, when you finally chase it down is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears — Hunter S. Thompson

Now, I love playing moms who can't hide their paranoia. — Wendi McLendon-Covey

But the reason that writers like Harlan and Lee don't outline is that they enjoy the serendipity, the surprises that arise when they're not constricted by the steel girdle of an outline. And I get that too. Some of the best plot twists in my work have been ones that I didn't plan on, including the ending to PARANOIA. One of the great pleasures of writing fiction is living in the story so that you "experience" it the way your characters do. — Joseph Finder

They will leave you alone with your thoughts, planting subtle hints and suggestions over social networking to encourage your paranoia. — Peace

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government. — Erik Larson

There was an air of vague and unsettling paranoia, an undercurrent of rumors, snatched fragments of conversation anticipating future revolution. — Patti Smith

Hello, Paranoia, My Old Friend — Rick Riordan

The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof. — George F. Will

I was diagnosed with paranoia for fear of never smoking weed again. — Eddie Bravo

He: Have you read Tolkien?
Me: No.
He: He's behind a lot of the way young people's minds are working. I can't make head or tail of it.

Chief of R&D for a transworld chemical industry (He) holding forth to R.D Laing (Me) about the infiltration of the 'extreme left wing' into American society [28 January 1973]. — R.D. Laing

There's an overwhelming sense of paranoia in the suburbs. People there seem so much more paranoid to me than people in the city about their kids being kidnapped or their parties being raided or their drinks being spiked. There's a kind of hysteria about that. — Meg Rosoff

My parents are going to kill me!" "That seems rather harsh ... — Garth Nix

"I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us," Jean Giraudoux wrote in The Madwoman of Chaillot, "and that every word we say echoes to the remotest star."That poetic paranoia is a perfect description of what the Sun, as a gravitational lens, could do for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. — Frank Drake

Paranoia seems more reasonable when you've got twelve stitches in your side. — Kate Griffin

I swear that I will never cause trouble for anybody, as long as I live!! So please! Nobody cause any trouble for me, either!! — Minoru Furuya

I have often perplexed myself over what I saw in Nelle Snyder's aged face at that moment. It was no look of paranoia. It was a look of waiting. Perpetual waiting. That look was to come back to me sixteen years later when I heard Rose's narration at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, with its line about survivors "waiting for an absolution that never came." Yet the waiting I saw in Nelle Snyder's face seemed larger even than a waiting for absolution. It seemed vaster even than Titanic herself. Call it the waiting of the Mother of all Perished Vessels. Or of a Ship of Honeymoon Dreams perchance, with a passenger list spanning all humanity, that once proudly sailed but was lost, aeons ago, and sank to a dark, unreachable abode where nothing whatsoever can be grasped about her except her perplexing power still to haunt us. — James Glaeg

People that have been consistently hurt by others in life will only see the one time you hurt them and be blinded to all the good your heart has to offer. They look no further than what they want to see. Unfortunately, most of them remain a victim throughout their life. — Shannon L. Alder

She was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all. — Lemony Snicket

There's nothing more refreshing than a good dose of paranoia after sex. ~ Tara Cole — Cindy Cruciger

You zapped your own brain?"
"And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the moodswings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count numb fingertips. Which I don't."
"Because he also lost the ability to count," said Donegan.
"That was temporary," snapped Gracious. — Derek Landy

Anyone could be anybody. (Eric) — Shannon A. Thompson

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

Sometimes, you know, I just want to curl up and see if anyone notices I'm not there.
But I know time is short. Moping around wastes times. I always get attacks of paranoia. Big deal. Fed up of worrying what people think of me and they feel for me.
But I wonder what they do feel for me, though. Am I loved? Perhaps in somebody's bedroom I am secretly fancied?
Probably not. — Rae Earl

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe nothing's wrong and I'm just paranoid. I'll know when they come in. I'll see it in their faces. — Carla Speed McNeil

It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

That's what the human brain is there for - to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there's a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that's religion. — Aldous Huxley

For paranoia was Zig's late style: How else but through networks and conspiracies could he fashion a target big enough for his outrage? Richard usually found paranoia uninteresting, insofar as it swept away the incidental, which was the real grist of history. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Batman: What have I told you about trusting dangerous and obsessive criminal geniuses?

Wonder Woman: To be fair, you tend to warn everyone about everything.

Batman: Point. — Landry Q. Walker

The beginning of revolutions is psychologically strikingly akin to that of certain relationships: the stress on unity, the sense of omnipotence, the desire to eliminate secrets (with the fear of the opposite soon leading to lover's paranoia and the creation of a secret police). — Alain De Botton

Sometimes I get such paranoia that I refresh and wait and wait in the same page until I get answer???
Why??
I'm not a crazy,... — Deyth Banger

So much of the inexplicable about the Soviet experience - the hatred of the peasantry for example, the secrecy and paranoia, the murderous witch hunt of the Great Terror, the placing of the Party above family and life itself, the suspicion of the USSR's own espionage that led to the success of Hitler's 1941 surprise attack - was the result of the underground life, the konspiratsia of the Okhrana and the revolutionaries, and also the Caucasian values and style of Stalin. And not just of Stalin. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

All that mattered was that Boyd was there. He was there for Sin, and when Sin opened his eyes to look at Boyd once more, Sin ignored all the self-doubt and paranoia. Because at that moment he somehow knew that Boyd always would be. — Santino Hassell

You stole my paranoia," she said. "I was going to say, 'Don't go.' But you're going to no matter what I say, aren't you? — Rachel Caine

A privileging of individual rights over group goods can lead to serious problems, as we've seen with the antivaccination movement. — Emily Matchar

Paranoia's the assassin's bedmate, — Steven Erikson

As long as anger, paranoia and misinformation drive our political debate, there are unhinged souls among us who will feel justified in turning to violent remedies for imagined threats. — David Horsey

[ ... ] I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. — Osamu Dazai

There is nothing like the cure of fresh air for cases of bladder infection, paranoia, and Cartesian thinking. — Rawi Hage

Paranoia is a survival trait when you run in my circles. It gives you something to do in your spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that aren't ever going to happen. Except when one of them does, at which point you feel way too vindicated.
- Harry Dresden, Changes, Jim Butcher — Jim Butcher

Who was responsible for this fear of the feminine that could only be described as acute collective paranoia? We could say: Of course, men were responsible. But then why in many ancient pre-Christian civilizations such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Celtic were women respected and the feminine principle not feared but revered? What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving ego in them. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless. — Eckhart Tolle

So is America over? A long time ago we "lost" China, we've lost Southeast Asia, we've lost South America. Maybe we'll lose the Middle East and North African countries. Is America over? It's a kind of paranoia, but it's the paranoia of the superrich and superpowerful. If you don't have everything, it's a disaster. — Noam Chomsky

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance. — Hunter S. Thompson

Happy, you really are a first-class gloomy bugger," JC said affectionately. "You could gloom for the Olympics, and still take a Bronze in existential paranoia."
Everyone has to be good at something," said Happy smiling in spite of himself. — Simon R. Green

I'm tired," I said. My voice shook as I tried to restrain my tears. "I'm tired of all of it. The running, the paranoia, being scared all the time, and the sleepless nights. I want a normal life. Is that too much to ask?"
"No, it's not. More than anyone, I believe you deserve it. The friends, the family - the house with a white picket fence, if you want it - you should have all of it."
I shook my head. "I am not talking about those things. I just want to live without fear, love without consequence, and not be blamed for the actions of my past in my future. I want to experience being me. — Loni Flowers

GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws
riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public
knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.
ROS: And talking to himself.
GUIL: And talking to himself. — Tom Stoppard

I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. — Andy Grove

Paranoia, the first cousin of a bastard named fear — Eric Jerome Dickey

Complacency kills. Paranoia is the reason I'm still alive. — D.J. Molles

Psychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in politicians that have never taken them. — Timothy Leary

She disinterred the wickedness in normality, cataloguing the ways conformity and repression tip into psychosis, persecution, and paranoia, into cruelty and its masochistic, injury-cherishing twin. Like — Shirley Jackson

Cat, you asked me before to find out if those dream -suppression pills had any side effects. I've checked with Pathology, and they said you might experience depression, mood swings, irritability, paranoia, and chronic fatigue. Have you noticed any of that? — Jeaniene Frost

On the TV he found cartoons and movies, music videos and game shows, repeat broadcasts and reruns, but there was nothing current, and no news. Many channels were just blank, or displayed brightly coloured test cards. — A. Ashley Straker

I have a paranoia that 'Ablutions' is the best thing I'll ever do. — Patrick DeWitt

This isn't the first time I've used this, and the test subject showed no signs of impaired cognitive ability."
"Who was the test subject?" asked Aurora.
"I test everything out on myself before taking it into the field."
She stared at him. "You zapped your own brain?"
"And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the mood swings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count the numb fingertips. Which I don't. — Derek Landy

My paranoia never ends, but I haven't been paranoid about being spied on my shadowy forces for some time now. — Jon Ronson

Blessed with the Beta Male imagination, he spent much of his life squinting into the future so he might spot ways in which the world was conspiring to kill him ... — Christopher Moore

I also believe that man's continued domestication (if you care to use that silly euphemism) of dogs is motivated by fear: fear that dogs, left to evolve on their own, would, in fact, develop thumbs and smaller tongues, and therefore would be superior to men, who are slow and cumbersome, standing erect as they do. This is why dogs must live under the constant supervision of people ... From what Denny has told me about the government and its inner workings, it is my belief that this despicable plan was hatched in a back room of none other than the White House, probably by an evil adviser to a president of questionable moral and intellectual fortitude, and probably with the correct assessment - unfortunately, made from a position of paranoia rather than of spiritual insight - that all dogs are progressively inclined regarding social issues. — Garth Stein

Terrorism is not just about indiscriminate violence. As its name suggests, it is about instilling paranoia — Dana Priest

It does not matter how sternly you tell yourself that the crippling paranoia of the small hours of the night is due solely to body chemistry. You still feel absolutely miserable. — Victoria Clayton

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

What would Warhol be without his paranoia, Hunter S. Thompson without his Quaaludes, Johnny Cash without his philandering? We Somebodies are not expected to walk the line. — J.T. Lawrence

It will change everything. We won't need governments and corporations. The very concepts our economic and social systems are based on: money, wealth, privilege, will be meaningless. What use is money when everyone can build everything they need?'...
'These are people who've spent their whole lives fighting their way to the top and you're just going to tell them that there is no top anymore?... it's you that doesn't understand: they only care about material things as status symbols, to show that they're better than everyone else, that they've beaten everyone else, that's what drives them. They'll never give that up. — K. Valisumbra

I'd write and read and let myself, a little at a time, step down into myself- like a stairway down into a dark, intimate kiva- where the work of vigil is taking place, the necessary attending. I imagine there's a little fire burning in there, a few steadily glowing embers, and a quiet chant going on, from me, from some singer in me, honoring and accompanying W's soul, which is with him as he is making his passage..there's a leavetaking in process, a movement towards increasing simplicity, away from complexity, activity, expectation. The bout of paranoia, with a childlike quality of being threatened, seems part of that-like a day or two when he couldn't just let go and float on the energies of other people, who are bearing him up-but had to doubt them, struggle. So much better when he can trust and float. There's enough love around him to carry him now ... — Mark Doty

I think paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill. — John Shirley

And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment. — Osamu Dazai

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

Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face. — Jim Butcher

His persistence allowed us to play a game, and pretend that everything can stay as it is now forever. It cannot. The events of this day have shown us what happens when you try to keep things from changing. Sooner or later the sleeplessness catches up with you, the paranoia about threats devours you and your mind betrays you even if your body does not. — Frances Hardinge

No INSECURITY makes us sociopathic; too much makes us paranoid; but a little keeps us humble and introspective-a good thing... — J.R. Wirth

He looked sad. 'It's hard to believe of her. She always seemed such a sweet girl.'

Sorrow rolled her eyes. 'Your problem, Tomas, is that your natural paranoia is in constant tension with an almost pathological desire to believe the best of people. Sweet tells you nothing. Fuck it, I could be sweet if the occasion demanded.'

They looked at each other. Caraway's lips twitched. Sorrow glared at him for a moment before conceding. 'Maybe not. But you take my point. — A.F.E. Smith

Although he was a young and virile man at 37, he was not inexhaustible. In addition to food and drink, he had better lay in a couple thousand tablets of viagra. The drug would probably remain potent if he vacuum packed the pills in groups of 10 and kept them in a freezer. That would work unless civilization completely collapsed and power companies were unable to function. Fortunately, Jim had a propane-powered backup generator with half a dozen tanks of fuel already on hand. If Henry added to the propane supply, and he used the generator only for essential maintenance like keeping the viagra freezer operating in warm weather, he would be happy here on the farm for a looong, looong time. Unless, even now, dead Jim was out there in the generator shed sabotaging the machinery. — Dean Koontz

Paranoia is a form of awareness. — Peter Robinson

You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia. — Irvine Welsh

I object in the strongest possible terms to the fact that the instant we stumble over possibly the most important thing anybody's ever found anywhere ever, the first thing SC does is snap into Full-Scale Raving Paranoia mode and apply this M32 total-secrecy-or-we'll-pull-your-plugs-out-baby — Anonymous

Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize. — Jon Meacham

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think everybody knows they have to be vigilant with their children. I don't have anything profound to say on that subject. We all know that we have to watch the children. The question is when does it become absolute paranoia? — Jeanne Phillips

The more you fear losing your power the more rules you will make.
Goverments suffer paranoia, they don't want you to know the real truth — Kimberly Loskov

God, what would someone so afraid do with power so awful? — Apollo Blake

Candor disarms paranoia. — Allen Ginsberg

Awkward conversations. They're the heart of the drug trade. The driving force that keeps criminals out of jail is paranoia. You can think you know people, but the truth is, you never know who they're talking to. The life of an outlaw: Around every corner lies a cop. In every basement waits a bust. Every friend is the guy who sells you out to keep his own ass out of jail. Sure, it was rare, but you just never knew.
The result was a series of shorthand and euphemisms so obscure even the pros often weren't sure what they were talking about. Sales became pickups. Pot, ganja, bud, or weed became lettuce, green, happy, herb, smoke... the list went on, and changed from dealer to dealer. — Daniel Younger

Let's not become so worried about not offending anybody that we lose the ability to distinguish between respect and paranoia. — Larry King

The real meaning of the word paranoia is
a man or person who has the ability to link events that seemingly are not connected. — John Coleman

With addiction, a client's fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana - the fear of Fear itself. — Geoffrey Wood

Paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness — John Lennon

Paranoia: the gift of the survivor and the burden of the overtired, stressed, and terrified ... — Patricia Briggs

His eyes trace the droplets branching down my chest.
They stop at my waistband.
"Brandon. Cutie."
"Yeah."
"You're still wearing your boxers."
"I am."
"Is there something you need to tell me?"
"No."
"Are you actually a Ken doll?"
"Nope."
"Is your dad a secret superhero and you have a bionic penis and you make up this big religious-paranoia back story because it shoots laser beams and has the strength of a bulldozer?"
"Yes."
"I knew it. — J.C. Lillis

Really great entrepreneurs have this very special mix of unstoppable optimism and scathing paranoia. — Astro Teller