John Gunther Quotes

Everyone has a private self and a public self.

I could easily not be the person that people know.

There's two Michaels: there's, like, my Michael. And the Michael that everyone else sees. Michael the entertainer.

I do feel kind of like I have a split identity in that there's Van Jones, who has this big public role and tries to inspire millions of people to do new stuff together. And then there's just me: a pretty quiet, shy, retiring person.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person - the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development.

Weird, but sometimes I feel more like my cartoon character than I do Lizzie because she's a little more edgy and snappy.

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

I was never interested in looking at myself in an aesthetic mirror. My intention was always to get away from myself, though I knew perfectly well that I was using myself. Call it a little game between 'I' and 'me.'

There's the private persona and the public persona and the two shall never meet.

I had a series of mini-breakdowns where the public persona - this thing, this face, this person who writes this music... I would walk past that person in the mirror or listen to that person playing guitar and I didn't know who they were.

People think I'm so strong, but I'm very shy.

When I watch myself on camera, in any capacity - being interviewed, performing, 20 years ago or yesterday - there's a part of me that really doesn't grasp that it's me.

You're looking at a different me than I'm looking at.

But I always see myself as the filmmaker. I wonder if everybody else sees me more as an actor.

Outside of my home, I look like a very obedient, very serious, very good kind of girl, but nobody knows what happens inside the house.

I had long ago become a creation, a public image made to be consumed, piled on top of a precarious shell of a little boy wanting to be loved.

I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy.

I never felt happy with the idea that part of what I do is to be an object to be looked at. I thought of my public persona as an entity separate to myself.

I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

I never really created a difference between Shaffer Smith, my actual name, and Ne-Yo. They are kind of one in the same. It's been a bit of a gift and a curse. As far as Shaffer Smith is concerned, I've never viewed myself as a celebrity.

It's hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

The woman who made those movies, that's not me. She's someone else.

I'm 25. I'm a white, blonde girl in the entertainment industry - it's so easy to fall into a world of pleasing everyone. I feel more comfortable showing all these odd angles to myself.