Quotes About Self-discovery

My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. That old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must dwell on, because I know more than I know and must learn it from myself—that same good weight worries me these days.

We can become more perceptive, more in charge of our own reality, as loneliness makes life compelling. Vitally, loneliness assures us that our life is our own.

Había dejado de ser un peruano en muchos sentidos, sin duda. ¿Qué era, entonces? Tampoco había llegado a ser un europeo, ni en Francia, ni mucho menos en Inglaterra. ¿Qué eras, pues, Ricardito?

What if after all these years you discover that behind your determined, disciplined mind, impervious to discouragement, behind the fortress admired and envied by others, you have a tender, timid, wounded, sentimental heart?

How does it feel to say no to the one man to whom you have always said yes? How does it feel when you stand up to him and reject all he has never questioned?

The word 'feminine,' as I understand it, has very little to do with gender, nor is woman the custodian of femininity. Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin. She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through going into darkness, mining our leaden darkness, until we bring her silver out.

If we are blindly living out an archetype, we are not containing our own life. We are possessed, and possession acts as a magnet on unconscious people in our environment. A life that is being truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual.

Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.

A real life doesn't mean getting what you want; the achievement, the privilege, too is knowing what you love.

The day I stood in front of the mirror and saw and loved my face and my hair for the first time in my life I was alone--completely utterly alone. We are always alone when we find the truth. The fact that we are alone makes the taste of affirmation no less sweet.

To educate myself, I had to understand everything. Starting with myself, me, Marji, the woman.

The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else's rules.

I read "The Second Sex." Simone explained that if women peed standing up, their perception of life would change. So I tried. It ran lightly down my left leg. It was a little disgusting. Seated, it was much simpler. And as an Iranian woman, before learning to urinate like a man, I needed to learn to become a liberated and emancipated woman.

J'ai lu le Deuxième Sexe. Simone expliquait que si les femmes faisaient pipi debout, leur conception de la vie changerait. Alors j'ai essayé. Ça coulait légèrement sur ma jambe gauche. C'était un peu dégoutant. Assise, c'était bien plus simple. De pus, en tant qu'iranienne, avant d'uriner comme un homme, il fallait que j'apprenne à devenir une femme libérée et émancipée.

under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts, must have wondered at my impulse to touch her, which was like touching myself, the way your own hand feels when you hold it because you want to feel contained.

What I had learned from Buddhism was that I did not have to know myself analytically as much as I had to tolerate not knowing.

It's one of my theories that when people give you advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past.

Simply speaking, they showed him that he could be kind. In his years of spiritual searching he had perfected all kinds of esoteric talents. He could take his mind into spheres of nothingness, go for days and weeks without eating, and rend his flesh with the best of them, but he was still operating with barely disguised contempt, not benevolence, toward himself and his world. When the enlightened Buddha told his admirer that he was awake, it was this basic kindness he was pointing to.

We cannot find our enlightened minds while continuing to be estranged from our neurotic ones.

More than the relaxation it evoked, this feeling in the dining hall hinted at who I might be if I wasn't who I thought I was.

But when we are able to see the extent of our own fears and desires, there is something in us, recognized by both Buddha and Freud, which is able to break free.

That was the problem, wasn't it? You left home. But you never did become an adult. Not really. You just fucked up in different and more complicated ways.

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.

Era la presa di coscienza nauseante di essere sbarcato sul pianeta sbagliato. O nella famiglia sbagliata. O nel corpo sbagliato. La presa di coscienza di non avere altra scelta che temporeggiare fino a quando non fosse stato in grado di andarsene e costruirsi un piccolo mondo tutto suo, dove si sarebbe sentito al sicuro.