Franz Kafka Quotes

Carving out an identity for yourself is important so I'm trying to do that as well.

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.

I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.

I know who I am by now. And I am my own brand.

I don't even know who I am. All I know is that I am the sibling, daughter, sister, the friend of somebody, and I need to know who I am outside of that.

One does what one is; one becomes what one does.

There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process.

In order for you to be yourself, you have to be somebody first.

I think people kind of come in who they are, and it sort of doesn't even matter who their parents are - it can affect you a little bit, and you can be guided and shaped.

Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?" - "That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?

There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.

Early in my career I was divided because I had the real self underneath: the lawbreaker, the anarchist, the person who swims against the tide, the outsider, the loner, all of that guy. He was my private self, and I had this other side that wanted to be liked in order to do all those things I dreamed of as a little boy. I didn't realize that those things didn't go together until later. And I'm quite sure that my use of acid and peyote helped me accept what was really going on inside of me instead of what I had imposed on myself.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

We have to really educate ourselves in a way about who we are, what our real identity is.

I think Zippy is part of me, but I'm not Zippy.

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

I believe BMX has shaped me into who I am today, so if this journey never would have begun, then who knows the person I would be or what I would be doing with my life.

I was motivated to be different in part because I was different.

I have always felt that I am the sum total of my parts.

I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived... I'm still learning all the time.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

I have struggled with identity all my life. It's not like something that just happened last week.