I Like Myself The Way I Am Quotes & Sayings

I try to have fun; I try to inject myself into my work and have a good time along the way and not lose sight of who I am, and who my friends are, and all of these things that treating it like a business might hinder. I try to keep that hobby mentality. — Ray William Johnson

I've been the same guy since day one. No matter how successful I am in life, I'm going to stay true to myself and stay humble and grounded. I feel like that's where your success comes from. Once you get that big head, it's over. You feel like you can't be stopped. Staying humble is the only way you can be great. — A. J. Green

I tried instead to drown my soul in drink. I cannot say I like alcohol, but I am someone who can drink if I choose to, and I set about obliterating my heart by drinking all I could. This was a puerile way out, of course, and it very quickly led to an even greater despair with the world. In the midst of a drunken stupor, I would come to my senses and realize what an idiot I was to try to fool myself like this. Then my vision and understanding grew clear, and I sat shivering and sober. There were desolate times when even the poor disguise of drunkenness failed to work, no matter how I drank. And each time I sought pleasure in drink, I emerged more depressed than ever. — Soseki Natsume

Ive been told that if I lose weight Id have more work, but I refuse to submit myself to Hollywood standards. To the rest of the world I am slim and I like the way I am. — Liv Tyler

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither. — Henry David Thoreau

For the first time since Ben died, I look like a widow. For the first time since I lost him, I feel like I recognize the person in the mirror. There I am, grief-stricken and un-whole. Widowed. It's such a relief to see myself this way. I have felt so insecure in my widowness that seeing myself look like a widow comforts me. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

It was easy to blame other people for treating me in ways I didn't like, but now I was seeing that I was the one at fault. The only way you can be mistreated is by allowing yourself to be mistreated, and that was something I did over and over again. Somehow, I needed to find that glimmer of self-respect, buried deep inside, that would allow me to say: I am never going to let that happen to me again. I needed to learn how to stand up for myself in a different way, but I didn't know how. — Jennifer Lopez

I am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship of conversations- bulkily, unnaturally- just so I can say his name aloud. I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I don't care. I balance his checkbook, I trim his hair. I've gotten so retro, at one point I will probably use the word pocketbook, shuffling out the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips red, on the way to the beauty parlor. Nothing bothers me. Everything seems like it will turn out fine, every bother transformed into an amusing story to be told over dinner. 'So I killed a hobo today, honey ... hahahaha! Ah, we have fun — Gillian Flynn

So when it comes to being a role model to women, I think it's because of the way that I feel about myself, and the way that I treat myself. I am a woman, I treat myself with respect and I love myself, and I think that if I'm holding myself to a certain esteem and keeping it real with myself, then that's going to translate to people like me. — Lizzo

I remembered what it is I like about sex: what I like about sex is that I can lose myself in it entirely. Sex, in fact, is the most absorbing activity I have discovered in adulthood. When I was a child I used to feel this way about all sorts of things - Legos, The Jungle Book, The Hardy Boys, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Saturday morning cartoons ... I could forget where I was, the time of day, who I was with. Sex is the only thing I've found like that as a grown-up, give or take the odd film: books are no longer like that once you're out of your teens, and I've certainly never found it in my work. All the horrible pre-sex self-consciousness drains out of me, and I forget where I am, the time of day ... and yes, I forget who I'm with, for the time being. — Nick Hornby

Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train. I am not inspired; nothing so uncomfortable as that. I am never seized with a sudden idea for a masterpiece, nor form a sudden plan for some new enterprise. My thoughts are just pleasantly reflective. I think of all the good deeds I have done, and (when these give out) of all the good deeds I am going to do. I look out of the window and say lazily to myself, "How jolly to live there"; and a little farther on, "How jolly not to live there." I see a cow, and I wonder what it is like to be a cow, and I wonder whether the cow wonders what it is to be like me; and perhaps, by this time, we have passed on to a sheep, and I wonder if it is more fun being a sheep. My mind wanders on in a way which would annoy Pelman a good deal, but it wanders on quite happily, and the "clankety-clank" of the train adds a very soothing accompaniment. So soothing, indeed, that at any moment I can close my eyes and pass into a pleasant state of sleep. — A.A. Milne

I don't love the way I look. Nobody does, and if they do, I don't want to be that person's friend. But we all know what we're insecure about. The question I had as I was writing was, 'How are these things affecting the way I live? How am I compensating because I don't like this about myself? What do I do to cover it up?' — Tyler Joseph

Condemning ourselves is the quickest way to get a substitute sense of worth. People who have almost, but not quite, lost their feeling of worth generally have very strong needs to condemn themselves, for that is the most ready way of drowning the bitter ache of feelings of worthlessness and humiliation. It is as though the person were saying to himself, "I must be important that I am so worth condemning," or "Look how noble I am: I have such high ideals and I am so ashamed of myself that I fall short." A psychoanalyst once pointedly remarked that when someone in psychoanalysis berates himself at great length for picayune sins, he feels like asking, "Who do you think you are?" The self-condemning person is very often trying to show how important he is that God is so concerned with punishing him. — Rollo May

I am not the heroine of this story.
And I'm not trying to be cute. It's the truth. I'm diagnosed borderline and seriously fucked-up. I hold grudges. I bottle my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes. I'm completely dysfunctional and that's the way I like it, so don't expect a character arc where I finally find Redemption, Growth, and Change, or learn How to Forgive Myself and Others. — Leah Raeder

The outright propagandist sets up in me such a fury of opposition I am not apt to care much whether he has got his facts straight or not. He is like someone standing on your toes between you and an open window, describing the view to you. All I ask of him to do is to open the window, stand out of the way, and let me look at the view for myself. — Katherine Anne Porter

I know that what had happened with my father - his insults, his criticism, the way he made me feel that I was defective and deformed - had hurt me. I'd encountered enough of those self-help articles in women's magazines to know that you don't go through that kind of cruelty unscathed. With every man I met, I'd watch myself carefully.
Did I really like that editor, I'd wonder, or am I just searching for Daddy? Do I love this guy, I'd ask myself, or do I just think he'd never leave me, the way my father did? — Jennifer Weiner

She was talking too loud now, shouting almost, and a long silence followed. Why was she being like this? He was only trying to help. In what way did he benefit from this friendship? He should get up and walk away, that's what he should do. They turned to look at each other at the same time.
"Sorry," he said.
"No, I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for?"
"Rattling on like a ... .mad cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being ... so boring."
"You're not that boring."
"I am, Dex. God, I swear, I bore myself."
"Well you don't bore me." He took her hand in his. "You couldd never bore me. You're one in a million, Em."
"I'm not even one in three."
He kicked her foot with his. "Em?"
"What?"
"Just take it, will you? Just shut up and take it. — David Nicholls

I just feel so guilty." Her stinging eyes burned with fresh tears. "I don't know why I can't ... I can't..."
"Make love to him?"
She nodded.
"Let him see you?"
She nodded again, tears sliding down her face. She mopped them up with the wet tissue she'd wadded in her fist.
"Are you scared he won't love you anymore, after he's seen how you look now?" her dad asked gently.
"No."
"Are you scared he won't be attracted to you anymore? That he won't want to be your lover?"
"No."
"What are you scared of, Vanka?"
"I don't feel the same way about myself, now. I don't even know how to explain it. I'm not ashamed. I don't feel ugly. But the way I was, who I was when we ... when we fell in love, I'm not that person, now."
"You're not in love with him anymore?"
"I am," her voice broke on a sob. "So in love. Like I never knew it could be. I thought I loved David. I thought I loved Mark. But, god, Dad, the way I love Galen... — Varian Krylov

When I make a film, I am hoping to reinvent the genre a little bit. I just do it my way. I make my own little Quentin versions of them ... I consider myself a student of cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study. — Quentin Tarantino

You have got to decide, look, this is who I am; this is my best way to present myself, and I'm going to ride that horse to the finish line. Not everybody will like it, but that's OK. — Phil McGraw

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I say myself as somebody I'd seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong. — Toni Morrison

I often feel like that with the way I portray myself I come off as looking much worse than any of the other characters. I guess it might also be worth noting that anyone I've had as a main character in a story I've written has had full knowledge that I am a writer who writes about the people in her life. — Marie Calloway

I am extremely ecstatic about the presidency of Barack Obama. I think he is paving the way for young African-American men like myself. I have very high expectations for Obama, and I am extremely hopeful that he will bring great lasting change not just to America, but to the entire world. — Texas Battle

When I sat down to write I just felt like a geek writing about myself. And then it dawned on me, just because of the way I am, I can't stop talking, and part of the problem is that anything that gets said reminds me of something that happened to me one time, and invariably I cut people off and talk about myself. — Paula Poundstone

I'm trying to learn that in my Christian walk as well. If I'll move to the beat of the Spirit and relinquish control of my life to Him, I'll be able to dance to the music God has playing in His head rather than movin' and agroovin' to the catchy little tunes I've got going in my own. For when I allow the Lord to provide the accompaniment to my life, I discover a richly layered soundtrack more beautiful than anything I could compose myself. But following God's beat, dancing to His rhythm, trusting in His sovereignty - all that can be hard for a rhythmically challenged, control-loving person like me. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm a headstrong little girl who wants her own way in pretty much every area of life. Fortunately, I have a Father who loves me in spite of that. But while He loves me as I am, He also loves me too much to leave me that way. So He insists I follow His lead in order to "grow up" in my salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Becoming more like Jesus and less like me. — Joanna Weaver

I'm not a programmer myself, but I am a very, very picky end user of technology. I like my machines to work they way they're supposed to, all the time. — G. Willow Wilson

Ted," he said, "when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?" I decided I'm going to live-or at least try to live-the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure. — Mitch Albom

When I feel like I'm not doing what I am supposed to as a mother, I will torture myself. I don't know how to deal with it. I find some consolation in the fact that all mommies feel it. If there was a way to cure mommy guilt, I would bottle it and be a bazillionaire. — Angie Harmon

Pops says he loves me just the way I am, but not everyone in the world is like my father. Maman, for example. A difficult and dissatisfied woman. She made me learn flower arranging and how to walk properly
books on my head, the whole bit. These things ruined me for life. Now it sets my teeth on edge when I see flowers carelessly flung into a vase, and I'm forever looking at other women in the street and thinking, [I]Sloppy ... sloppy[/I]. And I know I shouldn't care, and I want to poke myself in the eye for caring, but I care anyway, so thanks for that, Maman. — Helen Oyeyemi

I am a good person. I like myself the way I am. Many people love and care about me. I have a purpose in life. I don't want to kill myself. — Leila Sales

Losing It
Some days I think
I'm losing my mind.
What seems so
clear
most of the time
becomes a big question mark.
Am I really
the way
I percieve myself, or
is the person others see
the truth of me? I wait
for
answers, but inside
I know I have to go out
and find them. And
answers
like knowledge, are
not always where we
first look for them. — Ellen Hopkins

I am, and that is all I know at times,
My being shaped by forces known and not.
But whereas words are made to bend to rhymes,
My feet are bound to steps that I have wrought.

I feel myself expanding into this
Beautiful niche I could not see before
But I always sensed-and now I cannot miss
Myself: I am unlimited and more

Is opening to me, the more I open
To this sweet fear, like falling from a cloud,
My heart's inertia clear and calm, unspoken
But heard. It says to me: "You are allowed."

And I am free at last to feel this way
To take this step: to wonder, love and stray. — David Griswold

It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function. This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change. — Carl R. Rogers

And I told you: I think of a photograph you took of me, up in Montreal. You told me to jump in the air, so in the picture, my feet are off the ground. Later, I asked you why you wanted me to do that, and you told me it was the only way to get me to forget about the expression on my face. You were right. I am completely unposed, completely genuine. In my mind's eye, I picture myself like that, reacting to you. — David Levithan

You look at me and judge me. And I just want to ask, for what? I am in full control. No one has a gun to my head. Why can't this be my profession,one I have chosen for myself? I tell you prostitutes are professional in their skills and practise it like the vocation of true apostles- and why shouldn't they? What's so different from the accountant or the doctor selling his time? I ended up in this profession in the same way someone might end up being a lawyer because the couldn't get into engineering or dentistry,or because they couldn't get into medicine, or even a banker who grew up telling everyone they want to be a soccer player. They do those things because that was what was available for heir talents and their circumstances at that time. But do we pity them? No, because that's lif- — Panashe Chigumadzi

You don't have to be a writer, though, to know that making fun of yourself is a good way to deflect being made fun of. Like many people, I am hypercritical about myself so that I beat the haters to the punch. When I acknowledge my foibles first, no one else can use them against me. I've taken away everyone else's power to make me feel less about myself by doing it first. — Jen Lancaster

As I try to remember myself, I see where my wish comes from. It is from my ordinary "I." So long as the impulse comes from the possessiveness at the core of my personality, it will not bring the freedom necessary for a perception that is direct. When I see this . . . I have the impression of being a little freer. . . . But I wish to keep this freedom, and the way I wish comes again from possessiveness. It is like finding freedom from the influence only to fall back under it again, as though following a movement inward toward the more real and then a movement outward away from the real. If I am able to observe and live this, I will see that these two movements are not separate. They are one and the same process. And I need to feel them like the ebb and flow of a tide, with a keen attention that does not let itself be carried away and that, by its vision, keeps a balance. — Jeanne De Salzmann

I don't want to...be like this," I whispered as I looked away, and once I said it, I didn't even want to take the words back. A weird sensation hit me, almost like...like relief. That didn't make sense. Or did it? "I don't like who I am."
My gaze returned to his, and the concern was still there, filling his hazel eyes and thinning out his mouth. Tears crawled up the back of my throat. Humiliating actually, to admit something so intimate like that, but now I wasn't the only one who knew this about myself. It wasn't my secret.
"It's okay. You're not going to feel that way forever." Rider smoothed his thumb along my jaw. I closed my eyes, wanting to believe him. Needing to. He kept his voice low as he spoke. "Nothing lasts forever, Mouse. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I call myself good crazy because I am a crazy normal. But who is normal really? Are you normal? Maybe you are, but I don't think a lot of us are normal. I think a lot of us are scared to say that we are a little crazy. I'm a little crazy that is just the way it is. I look in the mirror now and I like who is looking back at me. I am comfortable in my skin for the first time in my life. I have let a wall down. — Shane Bunting

I'm often asked - and occasionally in an accusatory way - 'Are you atheist?' And it's like, 'You know, the only 'ist' I am is a scientist, all right?' I don't associate with movements. I'm not an 'ism.' I just - I think for myself. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I liked myself this way, it was such a relief to be free of disguises an prettiness and attractiveness. Above all that horrible, false, debilitating attractiveness that women hide behind. I puled my hat down over my ears so that they stuck out beneath it. 'I must remember this whn I get back. I must not fall into that trap again.' I must let people see me as I am. Like this? Yes, why not like this. But then I realized hat the rules pertaining to one set of circumstances do not necessarily pertain to another. Back there, this would just be another disguise. Back there, there was no nakedness, no one could afford it. Everyone had their social personae well fortified ... — Robyn Davidson

I'm over here in my unit, isolated and alone, eating my terrible tasting food, and I have to look over at that. That looks like the most fun I've ever seen in my entire life, and it's B.S. - excuse my language. I'm just saying that I wash and dry; I'm like a single mother. Look, we all know home-ec is a joke - no offense - it's just that everyone takes this class to get an A, and it's bullshit - and I'm sorry. I'm not putting down your profession, but it's just the way I feel. I don't want to sit here, all by myself, cooking this shitty food - no offense - and I just think that I don't need to cook tiramisu. When am I gonna need to cook tiramisu? Am I going to be a chef? No. There's three weeks left of school, give me a fuckin' break! I'm sorry for cursing. — Seth

You're just going to leave me here?" I shout after her.
"I'm not leaving you here, Emma. You're keeping yourself here." She leaves me with those crazy words, and then she's gone.
I am paralyzed on the beach in my school clothes. I can't help but feel that I'm in huge trouble. But why should I? She was babysitting me, not the other way around, right? It's not like I can chase her down and follow her. Her fins have already gone a distance I can't cover with my puny human legs. Besides, these are my favorite jeans; the salt water would be unforgiving.
Except ... There is that shiny new jet ski sitting there. I could close the distance between us, put my foot in the water, and find her. She would sense me, come back to see why I was in the water. Wouldn't she? Of course she would. Then I could talk her into staying here, not leaving me alone to drive myself crazy. I could manipulate her into feeling sorry for me.
Unless she's the complete sociopath I think she is. — Anna Banks

Some of the girls in the factory say that I have ice water in my veins. That I don't have feelings. That there's a calculator where my heart ought to be. A calculator! I shit on them. Por Dios! I consider myself practical, sensible, and realistic. That's the way I am, and if you don't like it, don't come around. Don't come crying to me. — Eduardo Santiago

And I will not allow you to think that you make my decisions, or made them. I am myself, not an appendage to you. Now go away. I must finish these arrows if I am to have even a few shafts that will fly true. I do not mean to kill you, and I would not have it happen by accident." Unstopping the glue pot, she bent over the table. "Do not forget to curtsy like a good girl on your way out. — Robert Jordan

Am I on my way toward that light? Are we always on our way toward the light like a shining blinding opening out of time and darkness? I ask myself as I walk on. I don't know where these words come from, because I'm not aware that I've ever had such thoughts before or that I've inherited such words. Is that what it's all about? Always under way? Always alone? Under way from this group in the half darkness, from these beings who will always follow us, never completely pale around us, no matter where we are, but who can be found around us in those closest to us, in those we meet, even if we travel across the sea... — Ole Sarvig

As far as I can see the church in the United States will continue to decline. Our situation is a little like Judah's in the late seventh century. The nearest I can get to an explanation of why I continue as a professor is that I have to do as Jeremiah did in that situation. I don't imply that I think of myself as a kind of Jeremiah or that I am important in the way that Jeremiah was, but I appreciate the inspiration to faithfulness that he provides. I appreciate his example as someone who continued to teach and write, even though he suspected in the short term that it was pointless. — John E. Goldingay

The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars ... I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did. I felt their completeness as whatever they had been in the world.
I knew I had come there out of kindness, theirs and mine. The grief that came to me then was nothing like the grief I had felt for myself alone ... This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy. In a strange way it added to me what I had lost. I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come. — Wendell Berry

Perhaps some of my hearers this evening may have occasionally heard it stated of me that I am rather apt to contradict myself. I hope I am exceedingly apt to do so. I never met wth a question yet, of any importance, which did not need, for the right solution of it, at least one positive and one negative answer, like an equation of the second degree. Mostly, matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four-sided, or polygonal; and the trotting round a polygon is severe work for people any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself at least three times: but once must do for this evening. — John Ruskin

DFW: I think there are different people on the page than in real life. I do six to eight drafts of everything that I do. Um, I am probably not the smartest writer going. But I also
and I know, OK, this is gonna fit right into the persona
I work really really hard. I'm really
you give me twenty-four hours? If we'd done this interview through the mail? I could be really really really smart. I'm not all that fast. And I'm really self-conscious. And I get confused really easily. When I'm in a room by myself alone, and have enough time, I can be really really smart. And people are different that way. You know what I mean? I may not
I don't think I'm quite as smart, one-on-one with people, when I'm self-conscious, and I'm really really confused. And it's like, My dream would be for you to write this up, and then to send it to me, and I get to rewrite all my quotes to you. Which of course you'll never do ... — David Lipsky

I've tried to be clear about who I am, and be as open as possible with the press, and speak extremely candidly and openly about stuff. I feel like in almost every instance, it's completely backfired, and I feel like people have all these kind of absurd ideas about the way I think about myself, and my own self-identity. — Zachary Cole Smith

That depends on the man. I like breasts myself. A nice rack goes a long way in getting me to do just about anything. Even stupid things. (Phobos)
You are so offensive! (Delphine)
Oh, please, I'm ten thousand years old. You're lucky I'm not more chauvinistic than I am. Babe, I've come a long way. (Phobos) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Only I am sure I met no one on the way, because if I had I should have had to master myself, walk like a woman in her senses, even give a greeting. And when you have to, you can. — Ellis Peters

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to. — G.K. Chesterton

I don't like to think of myself as an insincere person but if I say I love you and I don't mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way for you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things? — Jeanette

I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go. — Terry Pratchett

Though I cannot entirely agree with you in supposing that extreme study has been the cause of my late indisposition, I must yet confess that the hill of science, like that of virtue, is in some instances climbed with labour. But when we get a little way up, the lovely prospects which open the eye make infinite amends for the steepness of the ascent. In short, I am wedded to these pursuits, as a man stipulates to take his wife; viz., for better, for worse, until death us do part. My thirst for knowledge is literally inextinguishable. And if I thus drink myself into a superior world, I cannot help it. — Augustus Toplady

I must try to enjoy all the graces that God has given me today. Grace cannot be hoarded. There are no banks where it can be deposited to be used when I feel more at peace with myself. If I do not make full use of these blessings, I will lose them forever.
God knows that we are all artists of life. One day, he gives us a hammer with which to make sculptures, another day he gives us brushes and paints with which to make a picture, or paper and a pencil to write with. But you cannot make a painting with a hammer, or a sculpture with a paintbrush. Therefore, however difficult it may be, I must accept today's small blessings, even if they seem like curses because I am suffering and it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and the children are singing in the street. This is the only way I will manage to leave my pain behind and rebuild my life. — Paulo Coelho

I was thinking of Anna. I make myself think of her, I do it as an exercise. She is lodged in me like a knife and yet I am beginning to forget her. Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off. Will the entire canvas be empty one day? I have come to realise how little I knew her, I mean how shallowly I knew her, how ineptly. I do not blame myself for this. Perhaps I should. Was I too lazy, too inattentive, too self-absorbed? Yes, all of those things, and yet I cannot think it is a matter of blame, this forgetting, this not-having-known. I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another? — John Banville

I don't want to be treated like I came from another planet or something or was somehow born with some weird birthright or super power. I don't view myself that way. I am a normal guy, picking up the crap from the dog and scraping the BBQ and having a beer and fixing the shed out back. — Chris Hadfield

It's just like a big chunk of me has been ripped out and I'm not quite whole. I don't think I'm over dramatizing it, and I'm certainly deserving of it, but the way I feel now, it's just like you're talking to someone who is terminally ill and facing death. Death would be preferable to what I am facing. I just feel like imploding upon myself, you know? I just want to go somewhere and disappear. — Jeffrey Dahmer

ghost. No way am I gonna get bullied by anyone or anything - especially ghosts. "Mattie, you okay?" Mrs. Olson is eyeballing me with concern. I haven't moved to get out of the car. "All good, Mrs. O," I smile weakly at her. "Just tired." Taking a deep breath, I open the door and force myself out. I am not afraid, I chant over and over. The other kids are still at school, so the house is pretty empty. Mrs. O had told me earlier we had a new foster kid in the house, but I'm betting he's at school too. She sends me upstairs with the promise to bring me a sandwich and a glass of milk. The doctors said no caffeine for a while, so my favorite drink in the world, Coke, is off limits. At least until I can escape and get to a gas station. I need it like an addict needs crack. My room is exactly as I left it, the bed turned down and my clothes thrown into a corner. A simple white dresser and mirror, desk, and a twin bed covered in my worn out quilt decorate the room. — Apryl Baker

I still love you," he says, "but I have to go my own way." "So you want to break up?" I ask, trembling. "I guess so," he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. "You will find," she says, "that there's a certain grace to having your heart broken." I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. — Lena Dunham

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.
God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.
But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.
I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.
The last cowboy,
Robert — Robert James Waller

At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid.

Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now--I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was.

But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success. — Jeff Garvin

But I am not a failure as a human being or as a woman. In some core place deep within, I know this. I fail, yes. But I am not a failure. I disappoint. But I am not a disappointment. Yet when I find myself again in this place - losing the battle for my beauty, my body, my heart - I can sure feel like a failure in every way. — Stasi Eldredge

Vicky became more serious and her tone more reflective as she remarked, Life has so much pain that one needs a catharsis. I don't mean escape. You don't escape in books. On the contrary, they help you to realize yourself more fully. Mon Dieu, I'm glad I have them. When I find myself in a situation in which I'd rather not be - because of the perculiar circumstances of my life - I have this outlet. You may think me tres superieure but I'm not really, I am just what I am and live the way I like. — Flora Rheta Schreiber

I feel excitingly ... free. Things were going to happen to me last night that I did not like - and I stopped them. I have never prevented my own doom before. I have never stood in the path of certain unhappiness and told myself - lovingly, like a mother to myself - "No! This unhappiness will not suit you! Turn around and go another way!"
I have previously been resigned to any and all fates ahead - mute and compliant, worried about seeming weird or unfuckable, or about making a fuss. But now things have changed: it seems I am now the kind of girl who can instigate a threesome - then cancel a threesome, then order a cab. I am in charge of me. I can change fates! I can reorder evenings! I can say "Yes" - and then "No!" This is new information to me. I like this information. I like all information about me. I am compiling a dossier. I am my own specialist subject. — Caitlin Moran

Now, even when I make an outfit for myself, I wonder what other people will think. The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter. I always want everyone to think I am a good girl. Whenever I am around a lot of people, it is amazing how obsequious I can be. I fib and chatter away, saying things I don't want to or mean in any way. I feel like it is to my advantage to do so. I hate it. I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals. Then, my obsequiousness and this need to plod through life according to others' expectations would simply dissolve. Oh, — Osamu Dazai

Nicky, ten, reported in an offhand way (while I was rushing to make dinner and go out) that three of his textbooks were missing and I had to send in nine dollars. I totally blew up. My first impulse was to hit him or punish him. But, even though I was over the edge with anger, I somehow managed to get hold of myself and start my sentences with the word "I." I think I was screaming as loud as is humanly possible: "I am furious! I am enraged! Three books are lost and now I have to cough up nine dollars for it! I'm so angry I feel like I'm going to explode! And to hear this when I'm rushing to make dinner and go out, and now I — Anonymous

All the stuff I don't like about myself has been pushed to the back of my brain. Maybe that is what I like best about him, the way he makes me. Not makes me feel, just makes me. I am fun. I am playful. I am game. I feel naturally happy and entirely satisfied. — Gillian Flynn

Such gratitude! It hurt me to see you lose your professional standing, McGee. Like you were going soft and sentimental. So, through my own account, I put us into Fletcher and rode it up nicely and took us out, and split the bonus right down the middle. It's short-term. It's a check. Pay your taxes. Live a little. It's a longer retirement this time. We can gather up a throng and go blundering around on this licentious craft and get the remorses for saying foolish things while in our cups. We had a salvage contract, idiot, and the fee is comparatively small but fair."
"And you are comparatively large but fair."
"I think of myself that way. Where did the check go? Into the pocket so fast? Good." he looked at his watch. "I am taking a lady to lunch. Make a nice neat deck there, Captain." And away he went, humming. — John D. MacDonald

Then what good is he? (Maggie)
I ask myself every friggin' day exactly what you did. What good am I? The answer is simple. There's nothing good about me and I like it that way. Pride myself on it, in fact. (Savitar) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work. — James Joyce

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway. — Steve Coogan

...it was the very government and the way they treated us that started us on that road. For example, in my case, when they beat me in the DIC cells for being a "communist" and an "extremist" and all that, they awoke a great curiosity in me: "What is communism? What is socialism?" Every day they beat me over the head with that. And I began to ask myself: "What's a socialist country? How are problems solved there? How do people live there? Are the miners massacred there?" And then I began to analyze: "What have I done? What do I want? What do I think? Why am I here? I only asked for justice for the people, I only asked for education to be better, I asked that there be no more massacres like the terrible San Juan massacre. Is that socialism? Is that communism? — Domitila Barrios De Chungara

By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel. — Haruki Murakami

Thank you for your kind invitation. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. — Wentworth Miller

I'm just saying: I have never really felt like a girl is not the same as I have always felt like a boy. I mention this because when I have these tortuous inner conversations about how I may yet need to change my body and whether (and in what way) I am prepared to invest myself in the destination model of transition, I have to keep reminding myself of this important thing. — S. Bear Bergman

My music is just fresh. Everybody say it's a breath of fresh air because it's not like the normal Houston sound you would hear. I am from Houston and I use that same slang and I carry myself the same way as a Houstonian and I'm a Houston dude born and raised, but the music is a lil bit different due to the things I've seen and the things I've learned and put that into my music. — Short Dawg

I have a fetish," Kami claimed. "For scars," she added, and Jared's mouth quirked. His smile still looked incredulous, but in a different way. "Obviously my first choice would be Mr. Stearn, who was in World War II and is by all reports absolutely covered in scars. Hot, am I right? But alas, our love can never be."
"That's tragic," said Jared.
"He's like a hundred years old, I'd kill him with my enthusiasm," said Kami. "I couldn't live with myself. He's a hero who fought for our country. You'll have to do."
"I'm a little reassured," Jared told her. He laughed, a slow, wonderful sound, warm as the line of his body against hers. "But I'm mostly appalled. I had no idea of the massive age range my competition apparently fits into. Anyone from the age of thirteen to a hundred? — Sarah Rees Brennan

I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one. — Jorge Luis Borges

Sadly enough, some people are insecure in such a way that they cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than themselves. It makes them feel insignificant. But I know if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to the point that which it, perhaps, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my sheer humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my original Creator. — Criss Jami

And I'll tell you another thing, Patrick Michael Thomas Cunnane, if you think you can come and go at all hours as you damn please just because you're going off to college, you'd best get that thick head of yours examined in a hurry. I'll be happy to do it myself, with the skillet I have in my hand, just as soon as I'm done with it."
"Yes,ma'am." At the table Patrick say with his shoulders hunched, wincing at this mother's back. "But since you're using it, maybe I could have some more French toast.Nobody makes it like you do."
"You won't get around me that way."
"Maybe I will."
She shot a look over her shoulder that Brian recognized as one only a mother could conjure to wither a child.
"And maybe I won't," Patrick muttered, then brightened when he saw Brian at the door. "Ma,we've got company. Have a seat,Brian. Had breakfast? My mother makes world-famous French toast."
"Witnessess won't save you," Adelia said mildly, but turned to smile at Brian. — Nora Roberts

Fashion for me is another way I get to express myself creatively. It is one of the fun things I get to do: to play dress-up, and create outfits and looks that aren't typical. I am an artist, so I like creating things. Shoes are my favorite thing. — Rihanna

Sometimes I think I am made of air, like a balloon. Filled with so much emptiness that I just know one day I'm going to explode. I'm bracing myself for it. For the nothingness colliding hard and fast against me, in a way that I won't be able to stop it or protect myself from it.
What terrifies me the most is the fact that maybe I won't want to stop it. That I won't want to protect myself. That I've surrendered, accepted this and conformed to it — Tammy Faith

My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn't fake, it was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now. I tell myself that I am the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do. I am the sort of person who has several companies, so I do. I am the sort of person WHO WRITES A BOOK! So I do. It's the process of having faith in the self you don't quite know you are yet, if you see what I mean. Believing that you will find the strength, the means somehow, and trusting in that, although your legs are like jelly. You can still walk on them and you will find the bones as you walk. Yes, that's it. The further I walk, the stronger I become. So unlike the real lived life, where the further you walk, the more your hips hurt. — Dawn French

Before High School Musical, I wanted to be a nitty-gritty actress. And High School Musical came along, and, I was like, "Oh my God, fun!" But the more we did it, the more prude I became ... When I am around kids and they come up to me, of course I am going to act a certain way, but at the end of the day, I'm doing this for myself. I'm going to be doing movies kids can't watch. — Vanessa Hudgens

There are times when I'm super-overwhelmed, and everything feels like it's hitting me in the face at once, but I think what's keeping me calm, and who I am by staying true to myself, is my whole family being so supportive and keeping me grounded. They treat me the exact same way they treated me years and years ago. — Shawn Mendes

The fact is that in any open society people constantly say things that other people don't like. It's completely normal that should happen. And in any confident, free society you just shrug it off and you proceed. There is no way of creating a free society where nobody says anything that others don't like. If offendness is the point at which you have to limit your thoughts then nothing can be said. There might be people who might be offended by various kinds of literature. I myself, I am not very fond of, let me not mention Chetan Bhagat, I wasn't going to say that, so I have not. And yet, I believe such writer have a right to publish, and of course to live. The point is behind these ideas of offendness and respect there is always the threat of violence. Always the threat is if you do that which disrespect or offends me I will be violent to you and so the real subject is not religion, its violence. — Salman Rushdie

One by one, I'll face the tasks before me and complete them as best I can. Focusing on each stride forward, but at the same time taking a long-range view, scanning the scenery as far ahead as I can. I am, after all, a long distance runner.
My time, the rank I attain, my outward appearance - all of these are secondary. For a runner like me, what's really important is reaching the goal I set myself, under my own power. I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson. (It's got to be concrete, no matter how small it is.) And I hope that, over time, as one race follows another, in the end I'll reach a place I'm content with. Or maybe just catch a glimpse of it. — Haruki Murakami

Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge-and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject. — Parker J. Palmer

I'm just trying to have fun, and maybe the way I hold myself kind of freaks people out. I don't feel like an outsider, and I think my friends feel the same way I do. Now that we're playing to larger audiences, maybe we're weird to some people. But I'm trying to express what I am. — Mac DeMarco

My primary pastoral work had to do with Scripture and prayer. I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer- helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer. This turned out to be slow work. From time to time, impatient with the slowness, I would try out ways of going about my work that promised quicker results. But after a while it always seemed to be more like meddling in these people's lives than helping them attend to God. More often than not I found myself getting in the way of what the Holy Spirit had been doing long before I arrived on the scene, so I would go back, feeling a bit chastised, to my proper work: Scripture and prayer; prayer and Scripture. — Eugene H. Peterson

In addition to the gremlins, another thing that gets in the way of meaningful work is the struggle to define who we are and what we do in an honest way. In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, "What do you do?" I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of people. Now my answer to "What do you do?" is, "How much time do you have?" Most of us have complicated answers to this question. For example, I'm a mom, partner, researcher, writer, storyteller, sister, friend, daughter, and teacher. All of these things make up who I am, so I never know how to answer that question. — Brene Brown

Statements made by distant church bells remind me it is Sunday. Today the sky has become cloudy. I have been watching the clouds and it occurs to me that I have never done this in my life before, simply sit and watch clouds. As a child I would have been far too anxious to 'waste time' in this way. And my mother would have stopped me. As I write this I am sitting on my plot of grass behind the house where I have put a chair, cushions, rugs. It is evening. Thick lumpy slate-blue clouds, their bulges lit up to a lighter blue, move slowly across a sky of muddy and yet brilliant gold, a sort of dulled gilt effect. At the horizon there is a light glittering slightly jagged silver line, like modern jewellery. Beneath it the sea is a live choppy lyrical goldeny-brown, jumping with white flecks. The air is warm. Another happy day. ('Whatever will you do down there?' they asked.)
In a quiet surreptitious way I am feeling very pleased with myself. — Iris Murdoch

I don't really look at myself as a role model. And I just am the way I am and if people want to look up to me, they do. By no means do I like to give a negative image either. — Jordan Knight

I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms, them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready. — Wendell Berry

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.
Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness. — Lauren Oliver

It's hard for people to see you one way, but you're really the other way, so it's kind of like, 'Who am I, who are you?' Sometimes, I confuse even myself. — Nicole Polizzi