Scott Westerfeld Quotes

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

You are what you pretend to be.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

We are what we pretend to be.

I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.

We all become what we pretend to be.

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.

Mind is the illusion that which is not but appears, and appears so much that you think that you are the mind.

There is no one so bound to his own face that he does not cherish the hope of presenting another to the world.

I'm not always what I think I am, but I am what I think.

I'm the female equivalent of a counterfeit $20 bill. Half of what you see is a pretty good reproduction, the rest is a fraud.

...and yet I am what they think I am.

Anyone or anything that asks you to be untrue to yourself has already acted against you.

I would introduce myself if it were not useless. The name I had last night will not be the same as the name I have tonight. For the moment, then, let me say that I am thinking of Sam Slovoda.

After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

Although our package of skin and bones looks very convincing, it is a mask, an illusion, disguising our true self, which has no limitations.

Depending on their fondest memory of you, most people hold on so tightly to their fondest memory they don’t usually let you be anything greater than that. And that’s one of the things I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career. What I learned as I got older is I decide. I decide what it’s like for me, not other people. You can be whatever you’d like to be. You just have to choose it.

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.

I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.

This is what forty looks like. We've been lying so long, who would know?

We live our lives based on who we think we are.

suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.

It is fine to imitate a being you respect, but you cannot become that very being. Imitation is something one does to grow and develop. It is not something you use to deceive yourself. You absorb in yourself the things you think have some kind of value, but even if you try to find the meaning about your true self you will not find anything. Because those who cannot accept their real self always fail.