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Quotes About Self-awareness

Stop acting like you know me," Isabel said. "Well, you for sure do not know me. I'm not the person I used to be," Johnny said. "We're always the people we used to be," Isabel said.
~ Alice Hoffman
The story is always about searching for the truth, no matter what it might bring. Even when nothing was what it appeared to be, when everything hidden, there was a center not even I could run from: who I truly was, what I felt, what I was deep inside.
~ Alice Hoffman
She had ruined my father's life, and mine, and she didn't seem to notice. She was the sort of person who saw only herself and her shadow, and the rest of us disappeared in the bright sunlight.
~ Alice Hoffman
Would you like to know your fatal flaw?' Eddie flushed with annoyance. He could have easily made a list of Hochman's flaws, enough to fill several pages. Still, he was curious. 'Please do tell.' 'You judge what you don't understand.
~ Alice Hoffman
The imperfect were often angry
~ Alice Hoffman
Pauline examined her face for a few seconds more, her jaw set. And then she smiled a little, not kindly, raising her eyebrows and slowly shaking her big head. "You are naïve," she said, as if confirming something she had already spent a good deal of time discussing, elsewhere. "You really are." Mary shrugged. "I suppose. But that wind was making everyone tear up.
~ Alice McDermott
FREQUENTLY, PHYSICAL ILLNESSES are the body's response to permanent disregard of its vital functions. One of our most vital functions is an ability to listen to the true story of our own lives.
~ Alice Miller
We discover that we are no longer compelled to follow the former pattern of disappointment, suppression of pain, and depression, since we now have another possibility of dealing with disappointment: namely, experiencing the pain. In this way we at last gain access to our earlier experiences—to the parts of ourselves and our fate that were previously hidden from us.
~ Alice Miller
He has given ample evidence of qualities hardly any other living statesman has demonstrated to the same degree: the courage to look facts in the face and to seek flexible solutions, respect for others, give-and-take in dialog situations, absence of hypocrisy, a complete absence of grandeur in the conduct of his personal life. He has never been driven by blind self-assertion to make absurd decisions.
~ Alice Miller
At first it will be mortifying to see that she is not always good, understanding, tolerant, controlled, and, above all, without needs, for these have been the basis of her self-respect.
~ Alice Miller
The once-beaten children still living inside adults often fear being punished if they dare to truly SEE, without illusions, what their parents did to them in their first years of life. Once they understand that this danger no longer exists, they can liberate their life.
~ Alice Miller
The strength within ourselves—through access to our own real needs and feelings and the possibility of expressing them—is crucially important for us if we want to live without depression and addiction.
~ Alice Miller
Experience has taught me that my own body is the source of all the vital information that has enabled me to achieve greater autonomy and self-confidence. Only when I allowed myself to feel the emotions pent up for so long inside me did I start extricating myself from my own past.
~ Alice Miller
But that can only be possible when mothers and fathers no longer unconsciously assume that their children have been brought into the world to alleviate the frustrations and repair the damage they have suffered in their own lives.
~ Alice Miller
But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones.
~ Alice Miller
With the infallibility of a sleepwalker, she will seek out those who, like her parents (though for different reasons), certainly cannot understand her. Because of her blindness caused by repression, she will try to make herself understandable to precisely these people—trying to make possible what cannot be.
~ Alice Miller
Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel and constantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feel will ultimately fall ill—unless, that is, they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projecting onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves.
~ Alice Miller
Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self.
~ Alice Miller
The body would become aware of this sooner or later, and no amount of fine-sounding words would be able to deceive it for long.
~ Alice Miller
Once we have learned to live with our feelings and not to fight against them, we see in the manifestations of our bodies not a danger but helpful indications about our own personal history.
~ Alice Miller
There would never be any room in her for anything else. No room for anything but the realization of what she had done.
~ Alice Munro
There was a danger whenever I was on home ground. It was the danger of seeing my life through other eyes than my own. Seeing it as an ever-increasing roll of words like barbed wire, intricate, bewildering, uncomforting—set against the rich productions, the food, flowers, and knitted garments, of other women's domesticity. It became harder to say that it was worth the trouble.
~ Alice Munro
If you live long enough as a parent, you discover that you have made mistakes you didn't bother to know about as well as the ones you do know about, all too well. You are somewhat humbled at heart, sometimes disgusted with yourself. I don't think my father felt anything like this.
~ Alice Munro
If you live long enough as a parent nowadays, you discover that you have made mistakes you didn't bother to know about along with the ones you do know about all too well. You are somewhat humbled at heart, sometimes disgusted with yourself.
~ Alice Munro