Quotes About Introspection

I mean, I haven't been around very long. I can't expect everyone to have seen 'The House Bunny'. Oh God. I am having such waves of internal embarrassment, which now I'm admitting on a tape recorder. This is so one of the things I should keep in my head.

Reading reviews makes you thin-skinned. It's like waves washing layers off your skin.

One thing I'm super aware of in my music when I'm writing is: 'Am I overcomplicating this?' I'll write a song about some deep existential quandary and explore all these dumb thought waves, and then think 'Is it effective to say that? Or is it effective to say one simple thing that communicates the feeling better?'

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one's nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

I think the greatest amount of pressure is the pressure I place on myself. So in a way I chose to be alone.

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.

You gotta question the purpose you serve for those who invite themselves into your life. Learn who you are and always question the motive. No one knows you the way you do.

Being honest with myself is something I like. I am happy that I don't make excuses when I make a mistake. This is a good way to improve in the fastest way.

I was living an extremely burdensome life, because every time I prayed, I became more clearly aware of my faults. On the one hand, God was calling me. On the other, I was following the way of the world. Doing what God wanted made me happy; but I felt bound by the things of this world.

Every man is the architect of his own life. He builds it just the way he wants it. However, after he has built what he wants, he sometimes decides that he doesn't like what he has built and looks for someone or something to blame instead of changing himself.

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

I know I haven't always done things the right way. I'm just trying to reflect on how to make myself better, how to become a better man, a better father, a better person, a better artist.

I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

Is there no way out of the mind?

I remember playing John Wayne Gacy, serial killer, very sick, neurotic, screwed-up guy. You know what? There's a part of me there, too, and you explore that.

I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.

Sometimes acknowledging your erroneous ways is the first step to redemption.

The joy of my heart is to 'study men, their manners, and their ways,' and for this darling object I cheerfully sacrifice every other consideration.

Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low, I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not, And restless and lost on a road that I know.

I would consider my diary serves the same purpose as going for a walk or a run. They are all physical ways of clearing a mental landscape.

Admitting the truth would have meant exposing us all. We spent our first decade in the country learning the ways of the new land and trying to fit in. Having a slave did not fit. Having a slave gave me grave doubts about what kind of people we were, what kind of place we came from.

Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.