Thomas Pynchon Quotes

And then certainly, whatsoever you do - your character, your behaviour - is yours, authentically yours. It has your signature on it. Then you are not a carbon copy, you are original. The Zen people call it finding the original face.

The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.

I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.

I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please. That's how I know it doesn't exist.

For what is a man, what has he got. If not himself, then he has naught.

You've always made the mistake of being yourself.

I would get songs sung to me, like 'Old Man River, 'or kids would call me Mississippi and things like that. At the time, I wished I had a name that blended in more with my surroundings. Now, though, I've really learned to love it. From fifteen, I really liked it. It felt appropriate. Before that, I don't think it quite fitted me. I had to grow into it.

and there's something about having an especially different name that makes it difficult to imagine what you would be like as a Jennifer.

Be your authentic self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, or before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you're supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a social mask on to please everyone else. Give yourself permission to be your authentic self.

Four years ago... no, it was yesterday.

A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.

You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you.

A lot of people question my image and why I do what I do, and the answer is because this is how I want to present myself.

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.

Are the details of our lives who we are, or is it owning those details that makes the difference?

I don't want to be 'the girl with cancer' ... I just didn't want that to be my only thing. But it is part of me. And it's a big part of me.

Deny my individuality and I become an animal, mute, a mere creature of all the forces that act upon me.

Be yourself. No one else can.

Dignities are like faces; no two are the same.

Be true to yourself. Establish your own style and stick to it.

You're more than a story.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

Even beyond sexuality, I'm generally interested in identity.

It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists of being yourself and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours, except in the communism of charity and grace. For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Do your thing, and I shall know you.