Jean Houston Quotes

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

Without a musket to raise, a barricade to storm, a flag to wave, the question hit me in the face like the cold air: 'Who am I?'

At some point, when I finished school in Zurich, I suddenly realised that I was nobody. I couldn't find a shape. Everything I was had been invented. Initially, I took it to be a fundamental conflict. But today I find pleasure in accepting that this thing called 'identity' is the true invention. There's no way that it really exists.

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.

Everything when you're a teenager is a projection. Or at least, for me, it was. 'Who am I gonna be?'

I did have a midlife crisis.

As we wrestle with questions of identity, we imitate those actions we think best fill an ambiguity we have within ourselves. And that goes for everyone; no one is free from this condition.

If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.

When a person gets to the age of 35 and you go to jail, it either makes you or breaks you. It made me identify what I wanted.

I think, no matter who you are, at some point in your life you've probably said, 'OK, well, who am I, and where do I fit in?'

I contemplate the idea that maybe I'm an alcoholic. I get this occassionally, the need to define myself as something-or-the-other, and at various times in my life have wondered if I'm a Goth, a homosexul, a Jew, a Catholic or a manic depressive, whether I am adopted, or have a hole in my heart, or possess the ability to move objects with the power of my mind, and have always, most regretfully, come to the conclusion that I'm none of the above. The fact is I'm actually not ANYTHING.

I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.

It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

Eventually every man gotta face the problem of tryin' to figger if it's worthwhile to prove that he is himself.

We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.

This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal.

Can you question who you are? And are you comfortable with not knowing?

Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.

Men tend to define themselves by what they do, and so if you're dealing with a character who's trying to figure that out, or multiple characters, then there's something there for guys, too.

I am I-I am powerful, but to what extent? I am I.

I used to want to kill myself because I had lost so much of who I knew I was because of all the other invalidation from people. It sends you spiraling where you're like, Wait, I know I have this quality, I know what my integrity is - until you're being fed all this false information about yourself. You start to wonder why. You don't feel good about yourself because you no longer believe in yourself.

You get to a certain age, and you feel like you know who you are, and how you fit into the world, and how the world sort of perceives you. And you get pretty set in that. And then things can happen that can turn it upside.

What are we taking from people and what do we give is a life-long struggle, I think, for most of us. Who are we? Do we like who we are? Do we know who we are? Do we care? Does anyone care? That's such a big topic. I could tackle that in many movies. So could other people.

I was stuck in the feeling that one did not--was not justified in being alive unless one was fulfilling other people's dreams, whether they were contractual dreams or the public's dreams, or fulfilling my own dreams and illusions about what I thought I was supposed to be, which, in retrospect, turned out to not be what I am.

Daddy once said, "If you don't know what you believe, Annie, you'll be a lost soul.