Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes

Not to get too depressing, I've always been a slight whirling dervish in my life. I've always been at once a very spritely and energetic hilarious lady, but at the same time there is an equal dark side that's as comparable to the jovial - constantly walking on the high wire trying to figure out who to be each day.

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.

She thought about her life and how lost she’d felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths she’d been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?

I am not a man. I am not a human being inside. I am not that. I don't know what I am, but I am not that.

Where I fit in is confusing to me.

There was a time where I was really confused about who I was and what I was doing, and I was just kind of depressed.

It was one of those times when you can feel the air in a room. Everything stood still. I can remember the T-shirt I was wearing and the bag I was carrying. I don't think I breathed for 15 minutes. It was a devastating moment. They said they wanted me to experience more things. OK. I began contemplating things. Maybe I should take LSD or become a hooker. I left Juilliard and was just meandering and drifting for a while. Thank God I had support from my family and close friends. Bad times.

The very thing that drives you, can drive you insane Got a head full of thought crimes and a number with no name Got an eleventh hour Jesus and a mouth full of blame A casket lined with silver dollars and a number with no name.

Are you coming down with something?" Mom asks. And just for the tiniest of seconds, I wonder what would happen if I told them the truth. That school is nothing like I imagined it would be. That I'm not the girl in the catalog at all. I'm not a Happy College Student. I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.

Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by – not because she had no future but because she had no past.

I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.

In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.

She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things.

I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

When people are struggling, that's a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire.

I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

I worry that if I enjoy something - like the songs on 'Some Nights' are about wondering about who you are. I'm never quite sure and I'd hate to feel sort of content and get a good sense of who I am because if I know one thing, that's not me. I don't mind not necessarily being happy about it. And that's fine.

I kind of see myself as a cartoon that's on its way to becoming a real person that has to find that special amulet or mushroom to get to that next realm or level. I don't feel like anything is that tangible. It freaks me out, why I feel unhappy or conflicted and why that can change on a dime.

In every song I write, whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing that I find is feeling lost and trying to find your way.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

I don't know the true meaning of happiness.

I don't know what I am. And it's not important.

I've always felt like an alien trapped in a human form. We all do at some time or other; for me it's a permanent state, and I'm still unsure if Earth is a penance or a reward.