Oedipus Quotes

The novelist is condemned to wander all his life. Homeless and blind like Oedipus he wanders until death. And so let us protect the novelist and adore him, with pity, honor, and love.

Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act.

I thought of my mother (...). Freud wrote that no man is secure in the love of his mother can ever be a failure. Well, I had been busy proving that theory wrong.

...What was wrong between Diana and me was that she was too much a mother to me, and as I had had one mother, and lost her, I was not in a hurry to acquire another--not even a young and beautiful one with whom I could play Oedipus to both our hearts' content. If I could manage it, I had no intention of being anybody's own dear laddie, ever again.

This pursuit of unavailable distant people has oedipal roots.… fearing the consequences, they make certain that they fail at the attempt.”―Distancing, Kantor (p.115)