Jake Gyllenhaal Quotes

I started to realise that it wasn't for me. Perhaps I didn't have to give my Hamlet before I died, that the world might be an OK place without my Hamlet, in fact.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

I was actually looking for answers where I kept asking myself - what am I doing?

You spend 20 years doing something and when you're not doing it, it's hard to figure out what it is you're made of. Am I the guitarist in Slipknot and that is it, or do I have more dimensions than that?

I know myself," he cried, "but that is all-

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

I realised that I had always been writing things that other people wanted me to write and not what I really wanted to write, so I felt like I was losing my way.

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

Right after 'Raymond' I had a world-is-my-oyster attitude, but I found out I don't like oysters. I had this existential emptiness. 'What is my purpose? Who am I?' I had a big identity crisis.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

That's the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it'll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.

I always wanted to be an actress. And it wasn't ego. I felt so little about myself, considered myself such a sparrow. Not just my size. I thought I was so plain... I did plays not to show off but because if I did that - I didn't realize it at the time - I would be somebody other than this person I didn't really approve of.

Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, 'What's your background?' and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor. Howard Jacobson's 'The Finkler Question' forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.

What people don't understand is that it wasn't about Dean or Eddie, it was about whether or not I was in the right place.

Especially on unexpected journeys, you have time; you can figure certain deeper things out, like who you are and what you want. That's why I enjoy journeys.

There are times I can't even figure myself out.

I still don't know quite what I'm supposed to do or be.

I had money, but I still didn't know what to do with my life.

Every one of us at some point in our lives has had the struggle with identity.

It feels weird to say there's more to me than that, like I'm being overdramatic, and a tear rolls down my cheek. But, no - I do like I feel like there's more to me than just baseball.

My personal life, my musical life, my life as an artist - almost everything has pointed all these little arrows that make up which way I go as a person and what I feel comfortable as my identity.

You have to know your identity. It's the biggest thing in wanting to pursue creative dreams.

I'm not even sure who I really am sometimes.

Losing It Some days I think I'm losing my mind. What seems so clear most of the time becomes a big question mark. Am I really the way I percieve myself, or is the person others see the truth of me? I wait for answers, but inside I know I have to go out and find them. And answers like knowledge, are not always where we first look for them.

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