Quotes About Self-discovery

Nora had discovered that by herself was a condition she really liked

It's odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn't know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I invented. And finally I was what I was again...Anna Quindlen

Nora remembered drawing in the sand of her future with a stick. What she couldn't recall was when the sand had become cement, the who-I-want-to-be turned for once and for all into who-I-am.

All my life I had known one thing for sure about myself, and that was that my life would never be her life. I had moved as far and as fast as I could; now I was back at my beginning.

Perhaps instead of scaring ourselves we need to surprise ourselves every day. We are, after all, always a work in progress.

It's odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn't know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I'd invented.

Begin the work of becoming yourself.

All of reading is really only finding ways to name ourselves, and, perhaps, to name the others around us so that they will no longer seem like strangers. Crusoe and Friday. Ishmael and Ahab. Daisy and Gatsby. Pip and Estella. Me. Me. Me. I am not alone. I am surrounded by words that tell me who I am, why I feel what I feel.

Mostly I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

Then when she really thought about it she realized she'd been becoming different people for as long as she could remember but had never really noticed, or had put it down to moods, or marriage, or motherhood. The problem was that she'd thought that at a certain point she would be a finished product. Now she wasn't sure what that might be

People froze you in place, Rebecca sometimes thought, trudging through the woods. More important, you froze yourself, often into a person in whom you truly had no interest. So you had a choice: you could continue a masquerade, or you could give up on it.

It's one of the best parts of growing up and growing older, I think, that feeling that you'll just get through one day, and then the next, that a week from Saturday will take care of itself. I couldn't do that when I was younger. I don't know how much of this knowledge grows out of being female and having lived through layers of serial, often contradictory, lives.

I have no place left to live but in my own heart.

I think you know everything at eight. But is is hidden from you, sealed up, in a way you have to cut yourself open to find.

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!

Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again. Whenever you're feeling lonely or sad, try going to the loft on a beautiful day and looking outside. Not at the houses and the rooftops, but at the sky. As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more.

I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

Unless you write yourself, you can't know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn't draw, but now I'm overjoyed that at least I can write. And if I don't have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that.

I've found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can help you. Look at these things, then find yourself again, and God, and then you regain your balance.

The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feeling; otherwise, I might suffocate.

And keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if... there weren't any other people living in the world.

I've drawn myself apart from them all; I am my own skipper and later on I shall see where I come to land

I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion and love. If only I can be myself, I'll be satisfied.

If only I can be myself, I'll be satisfied.