Quotes About Self

I think most of my life I have spent trying to gain normalcy, whatever that may be.

You normally either get bitten by a character and decide that is the way to play it, and then that begins to inform everything you do, or you decide, 'I don't need to use much character in this - I have basically got to be me'.

Not caring more about what other people think than what you think. That's freedom.

I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

I'm not interested in how people dress.

I like clothes. And I think it's OK to think about clothes just so long as you also think about other things. I'm not interested in clothes to the point where they'll push other things out of my mind; I just see them as a way of expressing yourself, and a pleasure, really.

I'm putting out music that I love, and they're basically just stories of my life and how I try and teach myself to think about things. They're kind of like notes to self, basically.

Every day I need that confidence to get by. It ain't got nothin' to do with ball. It's who I am. It was instilled in me.

Autobiography is a genre notorious for falsehood.

Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

I've always thought a novelist only has one character, and that is himself or herself. In my case, me.

I think if I was interested in writing on my own, I would be a novelist - then you could write about yourself, and that would be it. You wouldn't need anyone else.

Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave. The self is a story we tell.

Novelists embody plural selves all the time. What are characters, after all, if not other selves?

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

Certainly I'm still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it's no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?

Every now and then, I deserve to say what I feel.

We all have dark shadows in our self that come out every now and then.

Fashion nowadays is all about product - bags and shoes - and you're kind of a product yourself, aren't you?

I belong nowhere and to no one.

American? Indian? I don't know what these words mean. In Italy, it is all about blood, family, where you come from. I'm asked where I am from. I'm from nowhere; I always was, but now I am happy knowing it.

If we want to change the nuance of a particular word we have to change that ourselves.

I am who I am. I can't do anything that doesn't have nuances of all the music I've done in the past.