Quotes About Introspection

I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I couldn't connect with people so I developed other senses. I had no other option.

All of us are looking for an outside ordeal that will internally change us.

The main thing I don't like about myself is an absurd level of self-consciousness that makes any sort of social encounter an ordeal for me.

In order for us to appreciate this world, we have to be a bit more honest, and I hope I do that.

You yourself don't have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality.

Authors are ordinary people who usually start to live apart, in the imagination, because they don't fit in with normal, healthy people.

I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.

A lot of banging in the head has built up over the decades, and for my own sanity, I needed to write. I wanted to see if I could tell an honest, organic story about characters that interest me.

I don't believe in organised happiness.

In the end, being the writer on set is a bit like having organised a big party, but you're not allowed to eat or drink anything. You just have to stand in the corner.

What I'm very concerned about is how do we bolster our self-awareness as humans, as biological organisms?

The latenight hours are apparently those in which the mind runs wild with scenarios and thoughts that during the daytime I know how to direct and organize.

There's the part of me that's the organizer, part of me that's the artist, part of me that's the person who, even with those two things, wants to figure out what my place in the world is. How to engage with it and whether my life has any meaning.

I was a real serious kid, real intense, and there were a lot of things that I was doing by myself I took seriously, like organizing little pieces of paper, cutting out things from magazines, and filing them away.

I enjoy writing about people falling in love, probably because I think the first time you fall in love is the first time that you have to figure out how you're going to orient your life. What are you going to value? What's going to be most important to you? And I think that's really interesting to write about.

I've got nothing very original to say myself.

I met Magnus Lidehall about two years ago, and the beat that I originally wrote 'Younger' on was one of the first ones that he sent me. I must have been around 21 at that time, feeling a bit lazy and disappointed with myself and my life.

I wasn't interested in fashion originally. Fashion was for other people.

I originally thought I'd grow up to be a woman. I didn't question that when I was little.

I think most people are interested in our origins; once we understand, it might be easier to become the people we'd like to be. Or, better, become the people we think we already are.

The people of New Orleans have gotten to rock bottom. And the only way out in my mind is for them to really understand it, and then to really choose to get better.

Growing up in San Antonio, I was the dork at the Friday night football games with my head buried in a book - Jack Kerouac or Oscar Wilde, years before I really understood them.