The Narcissist Next Door Quotes

“There's a reason narcissists don't learn from mistakes and that's because they never get past the first step which is admitting that they made one. It's always an assistant's fault, an adviser's fault, a lawyer's fault. Ask them to account for a mistake any other way and they'll say, 'what mistake?”
― Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your World

“The most decisive and certainly most delicious option for an aggrieved worker in a narcissist’s office is simply quitting. Slamming your resignation letter on the boss’s desk and striding out to take a better job somewhere else is satisfying and in both its finality and its totality. Instantly the feared figure is stripped of all power, reduced to a person of utter inconsequence in your life. Not only does this spell immediate freedom for the exiting employee, it can also contribute to the long-term decline of the boss.”
― Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your World

“Small children, by their very nature, are moral monsters.”
― Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your World

“For all the drama, romance and seeming magic of childbearing, what happy expectant parents are really celebrating is nothing more than a parasite-host relationship. At the moment of conception, an effectively alien creature commandeers the mother's womb and uses it as a sort of beachhead from which to seize control of her entire body.”
― Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your World

“When an organization starts hemorrhaging talent, CEOs and boards of directors want to know why. If the boss gets blamed for the brain drain and is ultimately removed, it means relief for the employees still there and ex post facto vengeance for the former ones.”
― Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your World