Quotes About Self-awareness

I'd be pretty saddened to hear anyone say, 'Yeah, listen to this... God, I'm awesome, the way this all sits together,' about their own work.

I know I'm supposed to say ageing doesn't bother me, then suddenly you're like, 'Yeah, I care about it, I really worry about it. I'm getting old. I'm old!'

Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is.

I really thought I was pretty good before I saw Hendrix, and then I thought: Yeah, not so good.

I've never looked at myself and thought, 'Oh yeah, I'm sexy'. I've felt sexy and confident, but I don't look at myself that way.

I know I come off like a very outgoing person, and yeah, I'm outgoing, but there's also a part of me that still likes to be in my little shell sometimes.

Mature? Yeah, I get told that a lot. I don't know if it's true. I guess I try to be bright.

I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, 'Yeah, I'm not cool enough for the West Village.'

I went through the extremes of amazing notoriety and also the dreaded things that you never thought you'd have to live through. Not everything works the way you want it to, but if I sit back and think, 'Am I happy about this?' Yeah. I wouldn't have done anything any better.

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

My coach keeps telling me to say I'm not going to retire. I should just go through the motions and see what I feel every year and see if I really want to do it, but personally, I want to do it, but my coach says just take your time, don't rush.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the 'Boston Phoenix,' and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that's where I first saw 'deadpan.'

I might not agree with myself in a year.

I am one of those people who are out of touch with their emotions. I tend to treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives - a long-distance call once or twice or year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay.

I see guys who are in the gym all the time, but their bodies are not a reflection of that. They look the same from year to year, and that has to do with the fact that they're not evaluating the effect of their efforts.

I don't think people change. I think they definitely mature. But I think the essence of what I am today is the same as when I was five years old. It's just maturity. I've become a healthier, fuller expression of that essence.

Just like food, you could think peanut butter is your favorite food for 5,000 years and then be like, 'I actually like burgers better', you know? I was just trying to say that kids and people in general don't have to label themselves and say, 'I'm straight' or 'I'm gay' or 'I'm whatever.'

Five years from now I'm probably going to look back on the things I'm doing and cringe.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they're going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do - take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

I'm humble 'cause I think many years ago people say, 'Well, Alibaba's terrible company'. And I know we were not that terrible. We're pretty good; we're better than people thought. But today, when people have a high expectation on you, and I start to worry and nervous because we are not good yet.

I'm conscious of the fact that I'm sort of a bridging figure. I have my Chinese literary heritage and cultural background, so I'm comfortable with these things, but at the same time, I have to navigate the Anglo-American tradition, which has a self-centred view of what Asia and what being Chinese means.