Time & Perspective Quote by Gene Wilder

Neurosis, in Gene Wilder's telling, isnt hand-wringing or eccentricity; its the seductive trap of moral over-commitment. He frames "spending too much time trying to correct a wrong" as a kind of psychological overdraw, where the impulse to fix becomes its own compulsion. The phrasing matters: "my idea of neurotic" signals a private diagnostic, not a clinical one, and it carries a wink. Wilder is gently mocking the way righteous energy can masquerade as virtue while quietly eroding your peace.

The subtext is classic Wilder: the performer who built a career on controlled chaos (the twitchy sincerity, the sudden escalations, the sweet earnestness turning feral) is admitting he has to manage his own internal script. "Correct a wrong" is deliberately broad. It could be a bad review, a misunderstanding, a personal regret, a social injustice. By refusing specificity, he makes the mechanism legible: the mind picks a grievance, then turns it into an endless rehearsal. Thats neuroticism as looped playback.

"Then I snap out of it" lands like a stage direction. Its brisk, almost comic, and it suggests trained self-interruption rather than enlightenment. Contextually, coming from an actor associated with both sensitivity and absurdity, the line reads as advice without sermonizing: keep your conscience, but dont let it become a full-time production. The intent isnt to excuse complacency; its to warn that fixation can feel like integrity while functioning like self-punishment.