Alice Meynell Quotes

As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.

I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.

There's a whole stereotype of the jazz musician that's into poetry and reading and metaphysics and all that stuff. Really, it's a sign of someone who's searching, whose mind is open, looking for answers. Whatever ideas you may come up with, the beautiful thing is the search.

There's the part of me that's the organizer, part of me that's the artist, part of me that's the person who, even with those two things, wants to figure out what my place in the world is. How to engage with it and whether my life has any meaning.

I'm trying to find out what the hell we - who we are.

How can I know who I am when I am all this?

Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

I feel like if I were to play the game completely and just get myself in a giant bottle of nail polish and put myself on display, I would feel like I had somehow cosmically lost. I feel like I'm taking a bunch of the ingredients and using some of them but not all of them and shuffling around and making people think I'm doing my job.

Sometimes I think I spend my whole life trying to figure out where I fit in.

Who am I supposed to be again? Just be yourself. But who am I?

... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.

Beauty was so heavily important in my family, something I had to contend with. All those experiences allow me to make what I'm making today. I grew up with that. There's a reason why I express that in my art. I'm trying to figure it out myself.

Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.

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 can't imagine a secular life, a spiritual life, an intellectual life, a physical life. I mean, we would be completely wrought with schizophrenia, wouldn't we?

I crave the indulgence of my senses but this is countered by an interior desire that is even keener than my senses to know the meaning of things

In LA, you think you're making something up, but it's making you up.

From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.

Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?

It's so much easier for me to get up and be someone else than expressing my own thoughts and feelings.

It's important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it's a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.

It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.

What is it you want? That's a question that we all get posed sometimes internally and sometimes externally.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?