Quotes About Self-discovery

Scary thought - what if I get to know myself and I'm someone I don't want to be?

How simple life was when she stopped trying to do what was expected of her and followed her will.

Acting was all about making yourself feel things-love,rage,euphoria,agony. She had to unlearn those things now. She had to teach herself not to feel. Refusing to feel hurt also meant she numbed herself to joy, but the sacrifice was worth it.

Alexander is a Montgomery. He doesn't belong in some backwater resort town. If he had stayed where he belongs, none of this would have happened. If you stay in bed every morning and never get up, nothing will ever happen to you. But that's no way to live. I can see why my son likes you.

It was a wonder, after so many years of trying to press herself into society's mold, to suddenly suspect that the problem was with the mold, not with her.

apartment? There was so much she didn't know, so much she wanted to learn but wouldn't let herself

Yes, she was a mess, but she wasn't fragile. She would not be broken. So many times in her life, she'd felt powerless, but once she grabbed hold of her power, she realized it had been there all along, waiting for her to find it. And Jerome seemed to know that. He was her safe harbor. He defined, at long last, who she belonged to, who was there for her, who saw her and cherished her.

I'm still figuring out who I am when I'm single." "Fair

me, my Rebbe was the geologist of the soul. You see, there are so many treasures in the earth. There is gold, there is silver, and there are diamonds. But if you don't know where to dig, you'll only find dirt and rocks and mud. The Rebbe can tell you where to dig, and what to dig for, but the digging you must do yourself.

That was one helpful thing he said to her, the first thing that caught her attention. "Start your life." Because she had assumed that her life was over.

Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.

So. I'll keep dancing in my costumes. Day and night. And I won't sleep as much as I should. And I will drink more than I should. And maybe, as I'm twirling and glittering, playing a retarded game of hide and seek in the middle of an open field, maybe, just maybe, whatever happens next will be bigger, and I will forget that which seems so huge to me right now.

I thought of the words of the Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne. "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

Do you still do the clubs?" Jake shakes his head. "You do the clubs because you can't find what you need at home. I've got everything I need. I've got the answer to needs I didn't even know I had.

It was hard to speak, what with my heart trying to climb out of my mouth. For every gay man this question comes at some point, in just such a tone, if not in those actual words. I don't know if real courage lies in storming barricades or in simply not denying the truth. I know it took every ounce of strength I had to say, "I'm gay, if that's what you're asking.

I hoped she wouldn't realize how spectacular she was until she was twenty-five and safely past letting it ruin her.

The movement was in me, but it wasn't me. It was another little something, a someone, willfully choosing to flex his flippery future arms, or whatever it was he had by then. It was a choice, but I hadn't made it. It was inside me, and mine, but I did not control it.

The things that happen to me just make me more me.

Among mankind's greatest faults is his a) kindness, b) generosity, c) fortitude, d) contentment, e) vanity. That was debatable. But the Pythagorean theorem was not, and if the civilian Uri was one side and the soldier Uri was the other, the true him was the hypotenuse, slanted opposite, the squared sum of both.

After having served the State of Israel for 36 months, or 154 weeks, or 1,080 days, they exchanged their drabs for denims, beat their munitions into passports, and shipped beyond the sea to find their fortunes. To find themselves, or the selves they'd been, and to forget the commands that bound them.

Rilke said it again: "Go within, and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth … For the creative artist must be a world of his own and must find everything within himself and in nature, to which he has betrothed himself.

After you've found your voice," Collins continued, "you realize there's only one person to imitate and that's yourself … This allows you to be authentic. That's one of the paradoxes of the writing life, that the way to originality is through imitation.

Be who you are, even if it kills you. It will. Over and over again. Even as you live. Break my heart, why don't you?

You needed to know only one person in your life, and that was yourself. You had to find that person and make friends with it if you could and hope it wouldn't turn on you before you had a chance to familiarize yourself with its habits and tear you limb from limb.