Quotes About Self-perception

Narcissus, gazing at his image in the pool, wept. A friend passing by saw him and asked, "Narcissus, why do you weep?" "Because my face has changed," Narcissus said. "Do you cry because you grow older?" "No. I see that I am no longer innocent. I have been gazing at myself long and long, and so doing have worn out my innocence.

But I feel a unity between the force which changed me and the red and gold energy which I saw. From within me, as part of me, it looked out and saw itself.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

They were all looking at Mary, and she felt more than ever like the new pupil at a school where they had high expectations of her. She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was new and pleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding. But along with that came the feeling that they'd got it terribly wrong, if they saw her like that; they didn't understand at all; she couldn't possibly fulfill this desperate hope of theirs.

The way you see yourself is important, you see. It's as if you carve yourself out of your own interpretation. And so I became the name I was called.

You're our Marcel Proust, Mr. Zuckerman. Zuckerman laughed. It wasn't exactly how he saw it.

L'immagine che abbiamo l'uno dell'altro. Strati e strati d'incomprensione. L'immagine che abbiamo di noi stessi. Vana. Presuntuosa. Completamente distorta. Ma noi tiriamo dritto e viviamo di queste immagini. «Lei è così, lui è così, io sono così. È andata così per questi motivi…» Basta.

Even when she was dressed up she didn't look like a chosen person.

Your average deformity sufferer has a love-hate thing with mirrors: you need to see how things are progressing, but you also hate it that they're progressing.

Paunch? I've a curved spine. Anyway, It's relaxed muscle. He looked down. All right, it's a paunch. A few more days of this and it will go.

Gallimard: You have to do what I say! I'm conjuring you up in my mind! Song: Rene, I've never done what you've said. Why should it be any different in your mind?

in his mind nearly everyone seemed to be noticing him in the same way that he was focusing on himself.

The trouble with alcohol is that it makes you feel young and look old.

you say you do not see it. you say I am too hard on myself. but I have lived with myself for too many years. I know exactly how hard I am.

It daunted me that you were so beautiful, that you were so at ease in social situations, as if every room was heliotropic, with you at the center. And I guess it daunted you that I had so many more friends than you, that I could put my words together like this, on paper, and could sometimes conjure a certain sense out of things. The key is to never recognize these imbalances. To not let the dauntingness daunt us.

This is what my voice sounds like I don't need to be talking to someone else To hear it

Picture me however you want to picture me. Because odds are that'll be more true than any of the bodies you see me in.

I think he'll be all sweaty because, let's face it most fat people get sweaty just from lifting the twinkie to their mouth, but tiny is just to fabulous to sweat.

jed is not a smoker but he's smoked. i am not a smoker and i have never smoked

The conclusion I reach: I don't like my body very much, but I'm not sure I'd like anyone else's body any better. They're all strange when you look at them for too long.

How much of my body is really me? My face is me, for sure. Anyone who looked at my face would know it was me. (...) But after that? If I showed myself a picture of myself from the shoulders down, would I be sure it was me? (...) I close my eyes and ask myself what my feet look like. I only kind of know. (...) I let it define me, but I can't even define it.

Enemies, like friends, told you who you were.

Because that's really something I can't stand — when people refer to themselves as crazy. The truly crazy are labeled so on the grounds that they see nothing wrong with their behavior. They forge ahead, lighting fires in public buildings and defecating in frying pans without the slightest notion that they are out of step with the rest of society. That, to me, is crazy.

At twenty-two, you are built for poverty and rejection. And you know why? Because you're good-looking. You might not realize it this morning, but thirty years from now, you will pull out pictures of yourself taken on this day and think, Why did nobody tell me I was so fucking attractive? You maybe can't see it now because you're comparing yourself to the person next to you, or two rows up. But you are stunning.