Quotes About Self-discovery

They didn't realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn't sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.

Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a center object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black. Pinpoints of light swell, sparkle, burst and shrivel within it, countless as stars. Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen.

Me, it's the heart: that's the part lacking. I used to want one: a dainty cushion of red silk dangling from a blood ribbon, fit for sticking pins in. But I've changed my mind. Hearts hurt. — Margaret Atwood, from "The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ," Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)

I wasn't even sure I wanted a man in my life again; by that time I'd exhausted the notion that the answer to a man is another man, and I was out of breath.

I am not a saint or a cripple, I am not a wound; now I will see whether I am a coward.

I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolor picture of blue irises, and why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatter-proof. It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Inside John, she thinks, is another John, who is much nicer. This other John will emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, a Jack from a box, a pit from a prune, if the first John is only squeezed enough.

They have a certain gaiety to them, a power of invention, they don't care what people think. They have escaped, though what it is they've escaped from isn't clear to us. We think that their bizarre costumes, their verbal tics, are chosen, and that when the time comes we also will be free to choose. That's what I'm going to be like

She'd stepped out of sex as if out of a loose dress. Now she was brisk, decisive, no nonsense.

But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. I'm free of the temptation, that's all. I'm free of the strings. Nothing ties me down.

I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory.

But there's something missing in them, even the nice ones. It's like they're permanently absent-minded, like that can't quite remember who they are.

I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Non temono che ce ne andiamo di nascosto. Non arriveremmo lontano. Temono altre fughe, quelle che puoi aprirti dentro, se hai un oggetto con un bordo tagliente.

I take back what you have stolen, and in your languages I announce I am now nameless. My true name is a growl.

I stand in the dark, start to unbutton. Then I hear something inside my body. I've broken, something has cracked, that must be it. Noise is coming up, coming out, of the broken place, in my face. Without warning: I wasn't thinking about here or there or anywhere. If I let the noise get out into the air it will be laughter, too loud, too much of it, someone is bound to hear.

at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.

It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Quien inventó el espejo nos hizo un flaco favor a la mayoría; debíamos de ser más felices antes de saber la imagen que damos.

With you I could have more than one skin, a blank interior, a repertoire of untold stories, a fresh beginning.

She had worried she would break if her heart broke, but she wasn't broken. She had lost everything, but she was not lost. It seemed a worthwhile thing to know.

I'm really too young to go out into the world alone, " he thought as he lay down

Lose yourself in the far off worlds that are right under your feet. Switch below with above all the way up into infinity. We should be thankful who we are, whether we know ourselves or not.

At times like this, I'm thankful I don't feel love.