Quotes About Self-perception

Your own body becomes used as evidence that the walls of which you speak are not there or are no longer there; as if you have eliminated the walls through your own progression. You got through, so they are not there.

Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work but important.

You look like a drug addict," Mom says. "It washes you out completely." "Wow. Thanks, Mom," I tell her, swallowing the lump her words bring up in my throat. "I can always count on you to build up my self-confidence." "Would you feel better if I lied to you?" Mom asks. "Okay, fine. You look like Miss America. There, happy?

Difficult. Everything is difficult at the moment. Sleeping is difficult because I keep having horrible dreams. Waking up is difficult because I can't sleep. Looking in the mirror is difficult because I hate the person I see.

And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she was wrong. I had seen that comet. I knew it as well as I knew my own face, my own hands. My own heart.

Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.

She tried to be someone people liked. She tried to be someone people disliked. But all I became was someone who didn't succeed with anything I tried to be.

As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

There was something really great about being able to put something out into the world—a song, an introduction, even my voice—and let people make of it what they wanted. I didn't have to worry about how I looked, or if the image of me people had fit who I really was.

You walk around like a dog waiting to be kicked. And when someone does, you pout and cry like you didn't deserve it. No one deserves to be kicked. You do if you don't think you're worth any better.

Either you're standing under your haloes, eyes up to heaven, or you're munching apples in their faces and flashing your bush. I'm not even sure they know which one they prefer. The best you can do is choose when you change your costume

The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn't that they'll remember; it's that you'll remember.

Which kind of safety are we endorsing here? Is it the safety from psychological "power over" and actual harm? Or is it the safety from being made uncomfortable by accurate information that challenges one's self-perception?

she had been surprised by a certain sponginess around her belly, her thighs, her hips, her upper arms. She didn't weigh much more — well, not too much — but it was as though what she did weigh had given up paying attention. Her flesh was not bothering to hold itself together anymore

it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.

My God! Who is this creature? It considers itself human.

France, they have no life at home, home is disgusting, and they need to see themselves in a French light only. This applies to somebody like Cioran or even our friend—your friend—Grielescu. They hope to turn into Frenchmen. But your wife is even more peculiar . .

she, although in a self-solicitous way, was a beautiful piece of tall work, on colossal but careful legs, hips forward; her mouth was big and would have been perfect if there hadn't been something self-tasting in it, eyes with complicated lids but magnificent in their slow heaviness, an erotic development. So that she had to cast

And it is not hard to guess what he, the descendant of serfs, risen to a position of such might, must have experienced. Confronting the leaders of the bourgeois West, so long feared and hated, he saw himself to be tougher, deeper, and more intelligent than any of them.

shyness is caused by an internal feeling that you are not worthy to be in the conversation.

Under this explanation of the power of affirmations, they act as a sort of message from your subconscious to your rational mind telling you that you have the right stuff, even if your common sense argues otherwise. This would be useful for people who have real talent but don't believe in it; surely there are a lot of people in that camp.

That's going to be your trouble — judgment about yourself. (Tender is the Night)

It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.