Quotes About Self-discovery

Who are you, Christina Olson? he asked me once. Nobody had ever asked me that. I had to think about it for a while.

Se siente como un payaso de circo que se despierta una mañana y ya no quiere colocarse la nariz de goma roja.

When she leaves, I inspect my reflection in the mirror—the first time since arriving in Minnesota I've looked in a whole piece of mirror unclouded by spots and damage. A girl I barely recognize stares back. She is thin and pale, dull eyed, with sharp cheekbones and matted dark red hair, wind-chapped cheeks, and a red-rimmed nose. Her lips are scabbed, and her sweater is pilled and soiled with dirt. I swallow—she swallows. My throat hurts. I must be getting sick.

She didn't have a compass, a map, or even a decent sense of direction. She wasn't certain she would recognize herself.

After a while you don't know what your own needs are anymore.

It was time to let go. She was no longer an angry child. She didn't want to carry that burning coal around anymore; she was ready to be rid of it. Yes, her mother had been selfish and irresponsible; yes, she sent her out onto the streets to steal and turned her back when she was caught. She also taught her the skills that would save her. The guard, heartless bastard, was right: Hazel was only hurting herself.

I now understand that no learning that makes a difference to my soul's evolutionary journey will come from the outside. Everything I need is inside….

The path to wisdom is to dress up and stay home.

I had left the cellar filled with ardent hope. A child had died there. She began life again as an adult. I wanted someone else to be glad I was alive. But men were interested in no one but themselves, and the sun caressed my thin arms and pale face with as much indifference as if I had been a blade of grass.

I do not consider my deeds or my knowledge to be a great thing. The only fact is — and I can say this honestly — that I love learning and a solitary life.

She didn't know how to love, to give herself to someone, to out herself in someone else's keeping and take him into hers. She didn't trust anyone with her heart - or the darker places of her soul.

Maybe you are already lost and just do not know it.

I remember times when I lived in a crucible of troubled phantoms, and faltered in the long, painful struggle for identity. But for me there was always a glimmering promise that lay ahead; with the help of God, a promise that has been fulfilled. I found the oldest gift of heaven--to be myself.

Justine couldn't see herself, but suddenly she felt as though she had a waist, a bosom, a long neck, slim wrists. She felt like a different person.

I didn't need to be liked or accepted. I needed to know and to accept myself.

Non è che siamo degli emarginati, è che abbiamo imparato cos'è che non ci serve.

There hadn't come a day when she consciously decided, sod it, I'm past caring about clothes and hairstyles and make-up, but the evidence suggested she'd reached that position nonetheless.

They say we all have a child within, but that didn't necessarily mean some soul of innocence and lost dreams. Having borne two, Simone knew there was nothing more selfish in the world than a child, until that child is forced to learn that it must share the place with everyone else.

Analysis gave me great freedom of emotions and fantastic confidence. I felt I had served my time as a puppet.

I've been heartbroken. I've broken hearts. That's part of life, and its part of figuring out who you are so you can find the right partner.

I felt ashamed, really ashamed of all the years I'd spent trying to identify the father who happened to be mine, instead of simply claiming the best on offer.

she would have to tell the story of this afternoon to herself over and over until she could make a different shape from it to comfort herself.

YA is about angst. Will I get that boy to like me? Will I lose the weight? Will I turn into a vampire if he just gives me a hickey? I'm an orphan! I'm a mind reader! I'm biracial! I'm gay! When I get out of high school, I'll move to New York City, where I'll find others like me, and then I'll be happy and I will have it all: a career, a family, good teeth, and takeout Chinese.

Helen Graham