John Burnside Quotes

Growing up, just singing in bands, I didn't have the same kind of voice as everyone else.

I never thought of myself as being the singer that wanted to create an identity and then stick to that.

We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.

Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal.

My dad could hold a tune. He wasn't necessarily a singer, but he did love music, and he listened to it quite loud in the car.

I don't know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.

I loved being a soprano. It was one of my very favorite things in life, and thus far, and losing that voice was a profound emotional moment for me in my life. I never became that interested in my adult male singing voice.

My biggest fear is becoming a parody of myself. That's something I struggle with.

I ultimately do still feel like an outsider, and I do feel, actually, I'm more in the world of music because of how much I participate with musicians - in all aspects, not just clothes.

My own child doesn't even know that Stephanie is my name.

I don't even recognize myself sometimes.

I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,' said Alice, 'Because I'm not myself you see.

Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it.

We spend so much of our early lives trying to figure out who we really are. And we spend the rest of our lives preparing ourselves to let it go.

If you realize what the real problem is-losing yourself-you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial.

A being who, as I grew older, lost imagination, emotion, a type of intelligence, a way of feeling things - all that which, while it made me sorry, did not horrify me. But what am I experiencing when I read myself as if I were someone else? On which bank am I standing if I see myself in the depths?

It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

She is well practiced in the art of losing herself.

Everything you do is measured by stats and it is difficult to keep your identity as a person out of the game. It can swallow you whole if you let yourself be engulfed by your statistics.

Caesar [from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes] was brought up with human beings and because of the drug he had pretty much grown up with his whole life, he felt like an outsider, he felt trapped in an ape's body but he didn't really feel like an ape and that was my way into the character. So he's always had this duality playing him from an infant all the way to now as a fifty-five year old ape.

Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.

If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.

Haven't lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don't lose what you never had.