Quotes About Self-discovery

I wanted to share the experience of how yoga and meditation have transformed my life, how they have enabled me to observe who I am, first in my body, and then emotionally, and on to a kind of spiritual path.

Yoga has brought me closer to myself. It's helped me realize the interconnectedness of the mind, body and spirit, in the Buddhist sense of the word.

Practicing yoga has helped me realize a deeper, grounded way of being in the world. I have learned how to communicate in a meaningful way that makes me smile and have learned the super handy skill of efficiency. Use what you need. Rest what you don't.

I can't believe how much time has passed. The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage.

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.

If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned toward writing with a burning desire to confess, to understand, to justify myself in the eyes of others... I wouldn't have been impelled to live in New York and choose the hard poverty of bohemia over the soft comfort of the business world.

Arca was a project born immediately after I came out of the closet in New York.

I was painfully shy, so my aunt suggested to my mum that me and my brother go to Stage 84, a performing arts school in Yorkshire. I've probably romanticised it in my head, but I seem to remember that in the space of an hour's drama workshop, I was transformed. I went in really shy, and I came out full of confidence.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Sometimes to go forward you've got to go to the depths of your own personal despair and claw yourself back. From that point, no matter what happens, you know you can do it.

It was such a relief to win. You tell yourself you can do it, but until you do you don't know for sure. And I found out I can do it by doing what I do, not what others do.

Being single I feel is a boon - why do you guys want me to push me into hell by getting me married?

One of things I like about looking at pictures when you're young and also meeting back with old friends you haven't seen in a long time is, for me, it's a glimpse of who I was.

I change my style maybe every month. I'm, like, punk one month, ghetto fab the next, classy the next. I'm just young and finding out who I am.

As a young actor, people were trying to define who I was before I really knew that for myself. But I still remember thinking, 'This is what I love doing, and I hope I'm going to be able to do it forever.'

As I look back and connect the dots, all I want to do is go back and hug my scared young self, who took a lot of steps out of impulse not knowing what will happen. So many nights of disappointment, so many others of being disillusioned where I would have just gone ahead and quit it all - I still do not know what kept me hanging in there.

When you're young, it's really easy to lose your perspective, which I did, really losing sight of who I was. I started believing I was who everybody thought I was, which was a crazy rock star. You know, 'Life's Been Good,' that story.

You're sexy when you're young. You've got it going on, and then you have your kids, and you give your whole life to your kids, and then they're kind of gone, and like, what do you do? You've got to fight to stay inspired, and you've got to fight to learn new things and stay young in your heart.

I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did - meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet.

My advice to young actors is probably to do some theatre; definitely do that. I keep running into these actors who have never been on stage, and it's invaluable for an actor. What you will learn about yourself is huge.

Sometime around 2006, I decided I had missed my true calling as a young adult author.

I started to read James Baldwin very early on in my life. At a time, as a young adult in the Sixties, when there were not that many authors in whom I could recognize myself, he was an important guide and mentor to me, as he was to many others. He helped me understand who I was and decipher the world around me.