Susan Downey Quotes

I try as best I can to enter the realm of nuances of human behavior.

I think creative people need to do a bit of, you know, tuning into every radio station - you just do, otherwise you don't know much about other people. You kind of have to learn a bit about yourself so you can work out how we all behave and why we do the things we do.

I don't think any one person is the cause of all of someone else's problems.

So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it.

A lot of what I've been learning in the last two years is due to therapy - about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven't worked. It isn't anything to do with anybody else; it's to do with me.

I've always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.

I am a very deep person. I run very deep in real life.

I've never been great at being really analytical about myself.

When I am talking to someone, I can constantly see whether I am failing or succeeding. I am regulating what I am saying in terms of how I think I'm doing. I'm always searching for the truth of a subject or person, and I look at every meeting as a grand experiment.

The one thing I've tried to do is be insightful.

Whenever I'm trying to understand people that I don't understand, or things in people or even in myself, I'll say, 'When did this negativity get here?' I try to think back to how I was raised to deal with things, and then consider how the person that I'm dealing with grew up.

I couldn't be Susan Sontag. I'm not very good with abstract thought. I always just take to the emotional core of me.

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't as conscious as I am. It would be so much easier.

What you really have to know is one: yourself. And the only way you can know that one is in the mirror of the others. And the only way you can see into the mirror of the others is by love or its opposite—by profound emotion. Certainly not by curiosity—by dancing around asking, looking, making notes. You have to live relationships to know.

I think you learn more about yourself in the context of a relationship than you can outside of it.

I don't really look at myself as the kind of person who craves attention, but I've never been to therapy so there's probably a lot of stuff about myself that I don't know.

I think about and study people. I think I make people uneasy sometimes by being so curious as to why they do what they do. I find myself thinking about this fairly obsessively, and I can't stop until I've found an answer.

I'm a complete human being. I'm very emotional and loving. I feel, I hurt, I give, I take, and also I think. I analyze. I'm a sociologist, anthropologist.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I spent my entire childhood observing people. I still do.

I'm hopeless at looking into myself and trying to see how things are working and why.

People talk about this 'bucket list': 'I need to go to this country, I need to skydive.' Whereas I need to think as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to be conscious and observe and understand me and the people around me as much as I can.

I've been in therapy. I know enough about myself now to know that I really don't need to know anymore.

I like to think I'm a listener, and I'm fascinated by observing people - I suppose you just lock that in.