Shirley Hazzard Quotes

Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.

Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.

You are.

Never think you can separate who you are from what you're doing.

You yourselves are the Being you are seeking.

I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

It's taken me a long time to realize that my own life is far more interesting than any part I'll ever play.

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.

As time goes by people will see who I am for who I am.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

I never had the chance to consider what or how I wanted to be.

How could I have been anyone other than me?

I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

I want to stop transforming and just start being.

Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.

When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough.

I always knew that there was something that made me different, and by the time I was in high school, I understood what it was.

I'd be like, 'You're a young, vibrant woman. Where are you?' I realized that I had been living in denial.

Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control.