Natalie Wood Quotes

Like so many kids, I just wanted to fit in, and I see now that I spent most of my life trying to be what I wasn't, trying to get people to like me.

I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.

The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.

I've been uncomfortable dealing with my identity since I was 16 years old.

More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.

The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.

Sometimes the world will tell you that you do what you do for a different reason than your reason. And if you let them convince you that that's your reason, it will become your reason, and you will lose track of yourself.

I spent so long trying to be other people, and it made me really deeply unhappy.

As we wrestle with questions of identity, we imitate those actions we think best fill an ambiguity we have within ourselves. And that goes for everyone; no one is free from this condition.

I remember in middle school and high school being so concerned with what everybody else thought. I was trying to be someone I wasn't. I wish I could've just let it slide and not cared about it.

I don't even recognize myself sometimes.

How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me?

We are so ruled by what people tell us we must be that we have forgotten who we are.

Come on now! How could you be me and want to be someone else?

I used to want to kill myself because I had lost so much of who I knew I was because of all the other invalidation from people. It sends you spiraling where you're like, Wait, I know I have this quality, I know what my integrity is - until you're being fed all this false information about yourself. You start to wonder why. You don't feel good about yourself because you no longer believe in yourself.

Once you don't have freedom and you're obliged to do many things you don't want, and it becomes a routine, then your identity is at stake because you can feel that you are not anymore yourself, that you are what they want you to be - and you can lose yourself.

I was stuck in the feeling that one did not--was not justified in being alive unless one was fulfilling other people's dreams, whether they were contractual dreams or the public's dreams, or fulfilling my own dreams and illusions about what I thought I was supposed to be, which, in retrospect, turned out to not be what I am.

Sometimes I try to lose my identity, and I can't get rid of it!

Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don’t know who I am at all. And either way I’m not happy.

When I was a model, I started with an opinion, but was encouraged to lose it. It began as play-acting, but then I lost sight of myself a bit: so when I did the audition for 'Popworld' and they asked my opinion, I felt like crying with happiness.

Sometimes when I go out on the road, I feel almost embarrassed or dismayed because I can't be the image of what kids want me to be. So I just try to be myself, and usually that works out OK.

My problem was I let myself become known before I knew myself.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

I look back at old photographs and videotapes, and I go, Who was I trying to be? Who was I doing this for?