Quotes About Myself

The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing--I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahman, I was determined to dismember myself and tear away its layers of husk in order to find in its unknown innermost recess the kernel at the heart of those layers, the Atman, life, the divine principle, the ultimate. But in so doing, I was losing myself.

Pushing myself against my own will really, because some of this stuff is hard. I don't consider myself to be a great guitar player, so pushing myself as a guitar player or pushing myself as a singer, as a performer, and just riding that fine line between being so hard on yourself that it's counter-productive and being so hard on yourself that nothing is ever good enough is what drives me.

I am very, very aware at all times. I'm watching myself, I'm listening to myself, I'm judging myself, critiquing myself all the time, and I will know when I do something and I will immediately say, "Can I do another one, because I didn't quite get that thing," or that I wanted to do something there and it didn't quite work.

I saw a sign at a gas station. It said 'help wanted'. There was another sign below it that said 'self service'. So I hired myself. Then I made myself the boss. I gave myself a raise. I paid myself. Then I quit.

If I myself dominate myself, if my thoughts revolve round myself, if I am so occupied with myself I rarely have "a heart at leisure from itself," then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity.

I'm my own toughest opponent. So I talk to myself. I curse at myself. I pump myself up. Whatever it takes to do. I don't really give a damn how it looks really because when I'm in the moment I need to be me.

I'm not used to being in front of a camera as myself. I'm not used to watching myself as myself.

But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

I have never judged myself by other people’s standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself.

Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.

I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life... Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to - and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for - myself.

...I started photographing myself, and found that I could see portions of myself that I had never seen before. Since I face just my face in the mirror, I know pretty much what it's like. When I see a side-view I'm not used to it, and find it peculiar... So, photographing myself and discovering unknown territories of my surface self causes an interesting psychological confrontation.

How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

I placed myself in amongst the animal kingdom so that I would be able to confront myself actually. It did not start out as the intention to serve and protect the lives of the innocent within the animal kingdom. I wanted to test myself, to see if I was able to overcome the dire situation that I was headed toward. By this of course I mention the fact that I was an alcoholic and drug addict before I left to live in the wild.

So many people always try to help me carry my luggage and help me do things I can do myself. If I can do it myself, I'm going to do it myself. I'm not going to let other people do it for me, and I think that's a big part of where I came from. I'm not a real prissy girl.

When I think about it like that, it feels like a burden. But that won't mean I'll be single for the rest of my life - I hope. I feel very settled with myself in my world. I don't feel as needy and desperate to prove things about myself. In my twenties I was very keen to achieve this and disprove this and that. Now I enjoy just being able to concentrate on my children and my work and myself.

I'd like to thank myself, and congratulate myself, and give myself a big pat on the back.

I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.

As a youth, I hated myself for not being good enough. All my inadequacies and failures, not being kind enough, generous or understanding enough, would assail me at night. It became a habit to be guilty and self castigating, not liking myself because I was unworthy... I really tortured myself.

People can do great things. However, there are somethings they just can't do. I, for instance, have not been able to transform myself into a Popsicle, despite years of effort. I could, however, make myself insane, if I wished. (Though if I achieved the second, I might be able to make myself think I'd achieved the first....) Anyway, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's this: great success often depends on being able to distinguish between the impossible and the improbable. Or, in easier terms, distinguishing between Popsicles and insanity. Any questions?

And I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won't stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people say, "Can I be of help?"

A game: say something. Close your eyes and say something. Anything, a number, a name. Like this (she closes her eyes): Two, two what? Two women. What do they look like? Wearing black. Where are they? In a park. . . . And then, what are they doing? Try it, it's so easy, why don't you want to play? You know, that's how I talk to myself when I'm alone, I tell myself all kinds of stories. And not only silly stories: actually, I live this way altogether.

What I find really interesting is to try and mix it up, to push myself and try different things. I don't want to stay in my comfort zone. I want to take risks and keep myself scared.

More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This (illness) is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.

If I want to free myself from endless cycles of struggling with temptation, I need to keep rediscovering that the pain of the struggle is greater than the pain of the desire. If I develop the habit of restraining myself, I'll enjoy the relief of feeling the desires pass, and I'll remember that desires are not the problem. Feeling pushed around by them is. I'll continue to have desires, of course, because I'm alive, but they'll be more modest in their demands.

If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?

I don't think of myself as a dancer. I think of myself as a singer-actress who moves really well.

People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis.

If you're asking me what I love, it's that point where I'm just scribbling and trying to make myself laugh and trying to outrage myself. Getting in that frame of mind where the more you laugh the more you laugh - I think that's what I'm attempting to do.

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report always being tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested - I'll kind of throw myself into some area that I don't completely know or understand, that I'm not adept at, so I'm forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There's a good feeling that comes from that.

I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,' said Alice, 'Because I'm not myself you see.

I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right?

It's not a gift of mine, but one given to me, to be able to criticise myself and not be crushed, by myself or by others.

A lot of people think that my work is about mocking or making fun of things, but a lot of it is about discomfort and making myself as uncomfortable as the men feel, or putting myself in a situation where I'm revealing my loneliness as much as they're revealing theirs.

In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You.

Tentatively I stood a great lump of wood on the chopping block and bought the axe down on it. It flew into two perfect halves. Such was my elation that I ran inside, put on our ancient cracked record of Aretha Franklin singing Respect and danced all by myself for half an hour in our living room, without inhibition, almost crying with jubilation – not just about the wood, but because I could live competently some of the time, and because that day I liked myself.

I’ve blamed her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And I’m the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it.I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. I’ve done that. All by myself. All to myself.

I am preparing myself for death. When I go to sleep, I try to keep myself smiling. So that when I die, I have a smile on my lips. I want an electric cremation. I don't want any poems or fuss after that. And for heaven's sake, don't bring back my ashes. Flush them down the toilet if the crematorium refuses to keep them. If they tell you that I am dead, I want you to give a big laugh.

I don't want to take photographs that I won't recognize as myself, and myself isn't necessarily just blankly staring at the lens.

[When her husband said her earnings as a married woman belonged to him:] I cannot persuade myself that that which I invent - create, in fact - can belong to anyone but myself! I wish that women could be dealt with, not mercifully, not compassionately, nor affectionately, but justly; it would be so much better - for the men.

I turn my gaze inward. I fix it there and keep it busy. I look inside myself. I continually observe myself.

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.

I was raised Irish Catholic, but I don't consider myself Irish Catholic: I consider myself me, an American.

I think I'm comfortable making myself, or my speaker, larger than life if I can then cut myself off at the ankles. The way, in "My Major Prize," the speaker does this drippy performance of sadness and poetry for some unnamed prize committee, only he lets us know that it's all a wry game.

I make my living now as a screenwriter! Which I’m surprised and horrified to find myself saying, but I don’t think I can support myself as a playwright at this point. I don’t think anybody does.

I don't have a lot of pressure on myself to be successful. I'm more of an artist. I just try to make myself more a part of the most beautiful painting as possible. And enjoy it.