John Ashbery Quotes

I'm still my parent's child, I'm still me, but I made a choice. I evolved into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I think it has to do with evolution.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

I just need to believe that we're not in some form of stasis, that we can try to be whoever we want to be. We probably won't get there, but we might get a little bit closer, you know?

The older that we get and the different stages we go through in life, it seems like we become different people. But I think that the truth is you are always the same person. You just discover these new things about yourself.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

We are constantly creating ourselves by what we move toward or away from.

Well, I think the world changes around you - I think you don't change. That's as simple as that.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I'm changing into the woman I am meant to be.

I have changed so much, post-'Raaz,' as a person.

When I look in the mirror, I see an ever-unfolding process.

And that's when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I'm still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he's in love with now, Willem changed my life. He showed me how to get lost, and then I showed myself how to get found.

You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.

Sometimes you have to lose yourself 'fore you can find anything.

I used to be someone.

Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.

In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.

I did not lose myself all at once.

I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.

I was the walrus, but now I am John. And so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over.

Some people spend their whole lives looking for themselves, yet our self is the one thing we surely cannot lose (how like a cheap philosopher I am become, staying in this benighted place). From the moment we are conceived it is the pattern in our blood and our bones are printed through with it like sticks of seaside rock. Nora, on the other hand, says that she’s surprised anyone knows who they are, considering that every cell and molecule in our bodies has been replaced many times over since we were born.

With a lot of comedies, the characters go on a journey, and they come back, and they're the exact same people.

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

I think I've probably re-invented myself three or four times now, if that's what one calls it.