Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.

I was in New York and was pursuing musical theater, and it didn't feel right. I felt I was forcing myself to do things and be things that I wasn't, all the time. I wasn't listening to what I wanted to do. I was listening to what I thought I should do.

Suddenly, I don't want to be this person anymore. I don't want to pretend I'm fooling the world when I'm not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I'm not doing a very good job myself.

I sometimes truly despair at ever being meaningfully altered and affected by the things I claim are so important to me.

My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.

It feels nice after a long career as an actor to find your own voice and support that.

'My Struggle' came from a place of questioning and feelings of inauthenticity and frustration, and almost all of that is gone.

I always knew who I was, but everyone else wanted to me to be their 'idea' of the 'right' artist. At times, I even believed them.

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

I'm now able to show who I am as an artist.

As a performer, the thing you want the most is to be your authentic self.

I think around 2015 and 2016 I ended up in an identity crisis, artistically. I didn't know what direction I was going in. I'm a perfectionist and I want to be truthful to my beliefs, if you know what I mean.

I think it was a desire to be able to find my own voice. I think that was the big urge within me.

I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don't know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

So many people go through life, and they never deal with their own issues, no matter what the issues are - ours happen to be gender identity. But, how many people go through life and just waste an entire life 'cause they'd never deal with themselves to be who they are.

My dream is to one day just be me and my guitar. I'm working myself to the core. Who am I, underneath everything else? I'm still on that journey, to find that core.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

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?

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

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.