Emily Dickinson Quotes

I'm in search of myself - have you seen me anywhere?

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

I came alone and I go as a stranger. I do not know who I am, nor what I have been doing.

Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I'm someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

I stare at the mirror as I try to remember who I am and who I am not.

I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I?

You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler's memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, 'Who am I? What is my name? Why am I here?

I don't know who I am, to tell you the truth.

I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?

Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for

When you don't know your values or who you are or you start to believe things other people are telling you, you get lost. I was just lost because I didn't know what I meant to music or what music meant to me. Now I just belong solo and I belong by myself.

Sometimes we can only find ourselves by first losing ourselves.

Might I be the one I am looking for?

I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do. The best way for me to find myself as a person is to prove to myself that I am an actress.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn't decide what to do. Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside.

I was trying to figure out where my intellect, if I really have one, where it fit. And so I was searching. I really didn't know who I was or what I really wanted to be, and in that search, like I think you do as an actor, you end up trying to define whatever that is, and I sort of said, "Oh well, searching spiritually in a way is interesting, and Eastern religion seems to be about a search."

Still findin' myself, let alone a soulmate, I'm just sayin'

The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.