Quotes About Self-discovery

The toddler must say no in order to find out who she is. The adolescent says no to assert who she is not.

One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!

Without 'Annapolis,' I wouldn't have gotten 'Tokyo Drift' - I wouldn't be here today. And, so, it's part of who I am.

It's not so much what you learn about Mumbai, it's what you learn about yourself, really. It's a funny old hippie thing, but it's true as well. You find out a lot about yourself and your tolerance, and about your inclusiveness.

So know yourselves first," she finished. "Then look back and account.

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

Like a dog defeated in a frenzied circle by its own tail and slowing and realizing then that the tail it was after all along was already its possession

I cannot touch my essential self.

I need to become who I already am

It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind.

And know this: Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours. Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place. You are a woman who can build it yourself. You were born to build.

Only you can decide what breaks you .

I must find peace in the only place possible in India. Within.

I realize I don't have to be a Christian who follows the church, or a Buddhist nun in robes, or a convert to Judaism

I wrote about myself so I wouldn't become paralyzed by rumination—so I could stop thinking about what had happened and be done with it. More than that, I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention. Experience in itself wasn't enough. The diary was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I'd missed it.

I want to shed my fears one by one until there is nothing left of me.

If you go to Paris, you won't find Paris; you'll find yourself in Paris. Ditto anywhere else. You might as well stay home.

What's curious to me now is that I didn't know at the time that I was suffering, so deeply involved was I in being saved.

I didn't get hugely famous really quick. It was a slow, gradual process, so I was able to sort of grow into myself and figure out who I was and what I wanted without the glaring spotlight on me telling me who I was.

We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.

You still haven't said where you come from. Where is your home?" I said, "I am a sheath, so home is wherenever my shade, my blade is.

I awoke in the deepest night to find I had been divided from myself. There lay my body sleeping and dreaming, and I was outside it; awakening. When we dream we may take shapes other than our own; a man may be his brother, a woman a king, and never question it. So, with the certainty born of a dream, I knew I'd become my own shadow.

You know how sometimes you can be going along and do something or say something, and suddenly you *know* yourself? I mean, it's like you're looking at somebody else, and it's just so fucking clear you want to hit something.

As she became more honest with herself, her writing matured, so that one could catch glimpses of what would emerge from its chrysalis as a poet's genius.