Jonathan Lethem Quotes

Fame doesn't make me any different. I am the same man now who grew up in the hard streets of Panama. I am just myself. I always will be. Whoever wants to talks to me, talks to me. Whoever loves me, loves me for who I am.

There are definitely die-hard fans. That's one thing about people from Brooklyn: they're very loyal, die-hard, believe in their team.

It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn't want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.

Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors, or to see themselves as others see them.

I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity—to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.

...self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

Some people have a view of self and of the universe that obliges them to struggle for happiness, to yearn for happiness-"some time in the future"-perhaps next year or the year after that. But not now. Not at this moment. Not here. Here and now is too terrifyingly close, too terrifyingly immediate. They suffer from happiness anxiety.

Once you see a child's selfimage begin to improve, you will see significant gains in achievement areas, but even more important, you will see a child who is beginning to enjoy life more.

We are what we are.

Self-love is the starting point for everything.

I registered the dukkha of self-aversion with such clarity that I knew there was no freedom unless I could love this life without holding back. This didn't mean I was going to ignore my flaws and stop seeking to improve what I could. But in the deepest way, I was not going to fixate on the conclusion that something was wrong with me.

I see knowledge of self. I know who I am. When I look in the mirror, I see me.

Love of self comes first. The one who loves everybody is the one who does not love anyone.

The ego says, I shouldn't have to suffer, and that thought makes you suffer so much more.

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.

...Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.

I believe that discipline and self-love are the total secrets to freedom.

Ordinary women attempt to change our bodies to resemble a pornographic ideal. Ordinary women construct a false self and come to hate this self.

And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.

Great pressure is brought to bear to make us undervalue ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches that each of us is an inestimable prize. There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death. Therefore we value and are ashamed to value ourselves.

It seems a strange thing, but once I was able to get past that kind of self-image problem, I was able to open up in my comedy work and just go all out, take chances, and have fun with the performance aspect of that.