Quotes About Self

Who says I'm vain?" "The comparison: your friend isn't. But I'm sorry for her, vanity is a resource. If you're vain you pay attention to yourself and your affairs.

and my ego gladly avoids leaning out the window.

Era yo-quienquiera que yo fuese-, y debía ocuparme de aquella cara, aquel cuerpo, aquellos pensamientos.

Forse era vero, ciò che di Bianca mi sembrava antipatico era solo il riflesso dell'antipatia che provavo per me.

Everything, in writing, has a long history behind it. Even my uprising, my spilling over the margins, my yearning is part of an eruption that came before me and goes beyond me. Thus when I talk about my "I" who writes, I should immediately add that I'm talking about my "I" who has read (even when it's a question of distracted reading, the trickiest kind of reading).

When one stops writing one becomes oneself again, the person one usually is, in terms of occupations, thoughts, language. Thus I am now me again, I am here, I go about my ordinary business, I have nothing to do with the book, or, to be exact, I entered it, but I can no longer enter it.

Extraviados en sí mismos, ignoraban que una vida no basta para descubrir los infinitos sabores de la menta, las luces de una noche o la multitud de colores de que están hechos los colores.

Aquí estoy, sentado sobre esta piedra aparente. Solo mi memoria sabe lo que encierra. La veo y me recuerdo, y como el agua va al agua, así yo, melancólico, vengo a encontrarme en su imagen cubierta por el polvo, rodeada por las hierbas, encerrada en sí misma y condenada a la memoria y a su variado espejo. La veo, me veo y me transfiguro en multitud de colores y de tiempos. Estoy y estuve en muchos ojos. Yo solo soy memoria y la memoria que de mí se tenga.

It torments you to know you were misunderstood, to not have risked yourself, and to wait.

Soy yo la que no me convengo.

Everyone wants to look for something of their own, a house of their own, a child of their own, a partner of their own, entirely for themselves alone. No one is satisfied with a room of their own any more.

Ah, lust! How one would like to make it the cornerstone of self! But I wouldn't go ahead and build on it if I were you.

The stolen body, the reclaimed body, the body that knows itself and the world, the stone and the heat which warms it: my body has never been singular.

We want people to represent us in politics—and in love and economics too. When people represent us fully, they are ourselves and are not ourselves. When an object is simultaneously the same as and different from the person concerned with it—or considering it—aesthetics is there.

The self can watch itself becoming lazy, or non-watchful; this is an asset that can make both for humor and profound well-being.

No one have the right to choose who you will be.

The only person who can tell you, who you are, is just you.

The body she inhabited during the day was not hers but rather a reflection from other people's eyes.

People are only the phantoms of their memories.

I didn't identify with anyone in any paintings.

It was impossible not to think that her beauty was one of the most important things about her–something having to do with who she really was.

Identity seems to be non-existent at a personal level—at best we can end up in a minority, and those who discuss it most are just those people who are aware of its absence in themselves.

It could be said that the discovery of ourselves is at the heart of what we call enlightenment, which is to say that that big, bright light at the end of the tunnel is us. The problem is that no one wants to discover that we're no better or no worse than the rest—indeed, to discover that we're no different than the rest—because that's no fun.

Any psyche, conscious of itself, will revolt against the shape, size or color of the body in which it dwells; this healthy—for that body, in fact, not only reminds the psyche of its mortality, it deprives it of its individuality, binding it to a group. Accordingly, crimes of racial violence outrage not only the victims, but all individuals. Apathy, in this case, is a sad indication that you are not an individual.