Willie McCovey Quotes

Any description of a person that comes from the outside is very hard to deal with. People don't like being summarised. It's nice to receive a compliment, but it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.

My problem was I let myself become known before I knew myself.

There is an image of me in France that is a long stretch from who I really am. I read about this girl who lives in grand hotels and has affairs with American actors - I don't recognise this girl at all. Sometimes it makes me depressed. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes I think, 'Gosh, that sounds nice, I'd love to be that girl.'

The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated.

Everybody in the world knew who I was before I knew who I was.

When I see myself on screen, I don't even feel like it's me - it's like it's a completely different person.

I didn't know that anything was wrong with me until the media got involved in my life.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

I became so consumed with trying to live up to what the public expected that I lost myself. I don't know of anyone else who can say this.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.

Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.

I don't recognize my former self. Like I'm on the outside looking in at my life. Who is that guy?

The heartthrob thing came in the late 1960s, and to be honest, it was fun! But I was very aware that well-known actors are two people - who you are and who other people think you are. Life only gets tricky if you confuse the two.

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me.

I guess I don't have a proper perspective on my fame; if I did, I don't think I'd like it.

I remember the first time I went to Europe, I had someone take a picture of me there, so I could really see myself there. There's a sense of being outside yourself, and I think celebrity allows us that too, to be outside ourselves.

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

I'm always shocked when I see myself because I don't recognize myself.

People look at me and go, 'You must have it made. You have girls. You have a great life.' It's not true. I mean you pull the curtain away, and you see I'm just as insecure and neurotic and scared and vulnerable as anybody, you know.

What bothers me, I guess, is when I get these messages from girls on Twitter, and they're like, 'God, you're my idol, I really admire you.' It's like, 'Admire me for what? What have I done?' It's not that being in a Burberry campaign, or walking in a Chanel show is nothing. It's just... I know I can do more.

With a fractured sense of self, we come to depend on what people feed back to us - often mediated through social networks - not what we are. We have complex identities but may become less able to act as a subject - confident in what we really are.

Am I an ego on legs? No I am not. Do I want to be seen out there all the time saying everything? No, I don't.

I know I come off differently than I think of myself. I'm always surprised by what people say about me.

All my life, I have taken inventory at intervals. For example, when I became a movie actor and suddenly I had to deal with fame, money and playing so many roles, I lost myself. I said, 'Who am I?' And I wrote my first book to deal with that, 'The Ragman's Son.'