Patrick White Quotes

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it.

I would like my kids to go to college and be exposed to the real world and to make their own decisions and find their own path instead of sending them somewhere where they would be creatively conditioned for one life path or another.

Jurgen loved London because he could get lost here. He said that it was the first time he could do that in eight years. No one knew him or bothered him. It is great for a person to be able to get lost.

I love New York! You walk around, nobody notices you, you don't notice anybody, you're in your own little world.

I was scouted when I was, like, sixteen, and I hated it. I wasn't ready to work. When I turned 19, I decided to move to Paris to pursue modeling for myself there. It was kind of a way to get out of the house and discover something for myself, in a way.

I've left Bethlehem, and I feel free. I've left the girl I was supposed to be, and some day I'll be born.

More having to do whatever anybody said you had to do. I couldn't really do anything on my own. But as I got older and then came to America and then Grace became my name, it somehow freed me. All of a sudden, I can be this other person.

From in the shadow she calls. And in the shadow she finds a way, finds a way. And in the shadow she crawls, clutching her faded photograph. My image under her thumb. Yes with a message for my heart. She’s been everybody else’s girl maybe one day she’ll be her own.

Get out and find ...the country. And ourselves.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

His warmth was all around me, as was his love, and again, I felt that completeness. I had that missing piece of my word back. The soul that complemented mine. My match. My equal. Not only that, I had my life back -my own life. I would protect Lissa, I would serve, but I was finally my own person.

Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time

Healthy love, I always think, is... wanting the person you love to be more of themselves. And I think for a parent that's a challenge, because you have to let a baby spread its wings.

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

Growing up in the '50s and being in the '60s, in that revolutionary time space, I thought freedom was what I was looking for. Slowly but surely, it became clear that the last thing I was interested in was freedom. Because if you're going to be free, you have to be free from something.

L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.

My mother is an actress and very well known in France; hence, I move to London to start my own life.

I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.

Every time I took a long leave from home, I felt as if I were going to conquer the world. Or rather, take possession of what is my birthright, my inheritance.

You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom.

I am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village.

Really rejoice in being yourself. Have your own drumbeat.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

You can't leave the thing that you are, the house that has become your biography.