Quotes About Self-awareness

Solitude demands a precise assessment of time, I've always understood this. It's like the money in your wallet: you have to know how much time you need to kill, how much to spend before dinner, what's left over before going to bed. But time seems different here. My walk took an hour, but to me it felt much longer.

All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.

I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.

The reality is you have to do your work and maybe you don't know everything. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm doing! But most of the time you can't even admit that, though.

Maybe my work looks a little crazy, a little insane, but I don't really see myself as a crazy artist or a shaman artist.

Maybe I am a little cocky. Maybe it's something I need to work on.

I make fun of guys when I like them. I act like I'm 10 years old. I do it as a test to see if they can laugh at themselves. If they get sensitive, then it's like, 'Um, this isn't going to work.'

We don't want to get frustrated because it sticks in your mind too much. We have to work at it and see what we did wrong.

Your words are so powerful and precious. Learn to harness them, guide them and let them work for you.

I work too hard, I'd be a really bad mom, unfortunately. I can't even keep a plant!

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

I'm a pretty harsh critic when it comes to my own stuff or things that come from my work.

When I was young, I thought I was a god. Now, I just basically work on staying humble. My priorities changed. Just to be able to try to change them - that was frightening to me.

If a musician is making a mediocre, self-indulgent body of work, they have to know that, for the most part, people aren't going to be interested.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.

I don't know which is more nutty. All this stuff I do outside of work, or the stuff I do all week.

I got work to do. I got a lot of work to do within myself.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

Before babies, I worked very hard to make sure I understood my surroundings and figured out where I fit in the world, whether it was at work or in a social situation.

I don't feel that censorship keeps me from doing the work, though. I'm my bigger censor.

I really just can't watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts.

Part of what I do comes from the fact that I don't know any jokes to tell. And when I do they're really flat and don't work.

The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

I'm not one of those people who's so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It's kind of risky writing a memoir when you're really part of a larger universe.