Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists of being yourself and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours, except in the communism of charity and grace. For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
The reason I make art is because I get to make a choice about who I am, what I do, and what I put out into the world, the footsteps I leave behind. It's a cliché for a reason - we all kind of work our own paths through the woods. There are not a lot of paths through the woods for someone who sings, plays the cello, and wants to tour on a human scale and create change in the world. I'm on my own path. It's pretty awesome.
What I realized with Funny or Die is that I could take it into my own hands. On a much smaller scale, I think these videos are an accurate representation of who I am. As weird as they may be, I'm at least proud of them, and it showed that I do have a slightly different voice. I can't tell you how often people bring up these videos in interviews, and I'm so happy to talk about them because we created them from the ground up.
This is a weird feeling in my life I have to deal with, not being a violent man anymore when my whole life's reputation was built on being extremely violent. I just don't know how to deal with that right now. I don't even go to strip clubs no more. I don't know who I am sometimes, but I am not the guy I used to be. I'm not an angel or anything. I'm still lascivious, periodically. I'm just looking for some balance in my life.
It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.
I guess it must be a time-of-life thing, looking back and trying to make some sense of who I am and where I've been. It's a weird thing, having to give an account of yourself, to try to make sense of yourself for yourself. I'm not that old, but I have been writing fiction professionally for a long time now. I started so young and went so hard for so long. And I guess it was about feeling I had the space to look over my shoulder.
My dad isn't sure how I make a living because I'm not in the newspapers or on music shows any more. The world is bigger than England, however, but for the large part, yes, people don't know who I am. What are you gonna do? Unless you're a superstar act that attracts young people because it might be their last chance to see you before you die, then it's fairly typical. I'm astonished that I have any audience at all, to be honest.
There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your D*** lemons, what the h*** am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful of poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the capitol, I am someone of worth. The trouble is, I don't know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment.
The biggest problem I had - and the biggest problem teenagers have - is not how they dress, how they look or how they act or talk. It's how they see themselves - their self-esteem. In the tenth grade, I realized I am who I am. I've got big ears and big feet. I can etiher sulk around or I can be happy with who I am. The minute I decided to be confident with who I was, all that other stuff stopped. It's all in the way you carry yourself.
I'm in a unique situation. I'm 5-foot-6, 175 pounds, so I wouldn't say people are super afraid of me. I live a normal life. I don't walk into a room and everybody looks at me and says, "He plays for the Cleveland Browns" or "He's an NFL superstar" - that doesn't happen. I go under the radar. Most people don't realize who I am until I tell them. So it's not like my life has changed since I've been in the NFL or people treat me any different.
I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few became qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to one - to who I am. And that's who I am.
I was in my late thirties and decided my intention in life had nothing to do with the acquiring of material things, but rather it was now my intention to experience the evolution of my own soul and to grow spiritually. I wanted to come to know the highest truths of life and to express those truths in action, through myself. I wanted to become the grandest version of the greatest idea I ever held about who I am in regards to my relationship with God.
Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.
So many people took my opinion and some will give it more serious consideration because of who I am. Not because I have a specility in this field that I gave my opinion on, but simply because I am a little bit famous. I find that kind of power to presaude both frightening and exciting. My hope, my most frevent hope, is that I use this louder voice that success has given me, wisely. That I always remember that fame is the by product, not the substance of what I do.
The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. If you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it — you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.
I think when you leave a band in any situation that you are a part of.. I mean, when I was with It Bites I was a quarter of something, and when I was with Robert Plant I was a sixth of some- thing and when you leave you become the whole thing. So just after you spend time realizing what you are, and it just happened that I was doing that in my life as well as musically, it kind of happened at the same time. I was getting to a point in my life where I was beginning to realize who I am, and I like me.
You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I’m finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you’ve . . . rested me.And don’t you dare tell me you’ve stopped loving me back, because you’re still a better person than I am, and I’m counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours.
Coming up with lectures is a huge amount of work. I was willing to do one lecture for Gresham because I was honored to have been invited, but to create lectures for a class would probably require that I shut down everything else and concentrate on lectures for a couple of years. Then there would be many, many other skills that I'd have to learn, such as how to sit through a faculty meeting, how to deal with students, etc. It is really not in the cards for me. It's not who I am or what I do. I'm a novelist.
It always comes back to our insecurities, as we say, "Oh, I'm not as good as you." So instead of accepting that perhaps I am not as good as someone else in some ways and being comfortable with who I am as I am, I spend all my time denigrating you, trying to cut you down to my self-perceived size. The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours.
My agent came to me with a deal from another publisher and I signed a deal and got the advance with no idea of what I was going to do. I probably procrastinated for almost a year, but we had meetings and I was basically going to spoof "Take Ivy," but then it kind of turned into something else. I wanted it to be a book of all the things that made me who I am, like Brooks Brothers, Hot Wheels, "The Andy Griffith Show" and G.I. Joes. I couldn't sit still and do it, so my agent had to come to my house and force me to do it.
In cinema people are always walking into something and saying this is who I am, what I want, and how I'm going to get it and we don't in life - particularly not in public situations. People might know your first name, not your last name, they don't know what you do, and you're not going to offer it up. So if you start there and you realize this is a much more normal presentation in a film then you would ordinarily have; you know that there is a big life behind what everyone presents and that I think is super interesting.
I am what some would say 'holy, and wholly other than you.' The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.
Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.
Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2)
Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…..Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live-but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.
I was attached to star in a project that was going to be an unbelievable character piece, to be showcased all over the world. It was everything I had been working toward and had suffered for. I had two months to prep and pretty much bankrupted myself in the process. A week before I was supposed to get on the plane, the whole project fell apart. Not only did it leave me completely broke and out of work, but I felt as if I had been betrayed by acting. Acting is not just something I love but a part of who I am. I was shattered. Thankfully, the love of those around me helped push me forward.
I'm not fighting with myself. Oh, my God. That's how I am. You know, the story of the hippo? The hippo comes to the monkey and said, listen, I'm not a hippo. So, he paint himself like a zebra. He said but he's still a hippo. He said but look at you, you're painted like a zebra but you are a hippo. So then he goes, you know, like I want be a little parrot. So, he put the colours on him and he comes to the monkey and said but, sorry, you are a hippo. So, in the end, you know, he comes and said I'm happy to be a hippo. This is who I am. So, I have to be who I am and he's happy being a hippo.