Jess Walter Quotes

I go out on the road for much longer than I probably should and lose more of myself than I should.

I've read a lot of different versions of myself - and all of them are true because it's all opinion, and they're as accurate as it can ever be. But I don't think that I've been deft at hiding parts of my personality.

I'm always thinking about identity. And the middle-school years are a time of exploring questions about who you are and who you want to be. For the first time, you see the world in a broader sense.

I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.

There are a lot of people who don't know me and what I am all about.

In real life, I feel tiny and quite embarrassed all the time. But when people come up to me in France and want to talk to Christine, it's okay. It's cool. Because they're really talking about themselves, their own Christines.

For a long time, I was just a football player, but I want people to see me for who I am.

There is Harlan Ellison the human being, who takes a crap a couple of times a day, and who farts, and who eats chicken croquettes, if I can find them. And then there is the writer, this writer-person, who is a much finer person than I. Much more orderly, much more meaningful. Worthier, than I [am].

The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

I don't think anybody's quite accurately branded me. I'm not sure I could do it myself.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?

To travel is to take a journey into yourself.

I think Zippy is part of me, but I'm not Zippy.

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

It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.

Like, that was weird in 'Hamlet 2,' because I played myself there, fully myself, but then I realized, 'Oh, I'm not playing myself. I'm some weird version of myself.' So as an actress, you're always playing something, I don't even know who I am, how could I become me? I don't know what that is.

In general, when you travel, you get into a different reality and are able to more accurately reflect on your ordinary life. Hiking does that for me.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

Every time I took a long leave from home, I felt as if I were going to conquer the world. Or rather, take possession of what is my birthright, my inheritance.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

My Life in CIA is the first time that I've ever written a story in my own name.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

There is an image of me in France that is a long stretch from who I really am. I read about this girl who lives in grand hotels and has affairs with American actors - I don't recognise this girl at all. Sometimes it makes me depressed. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes I think, 'Gosh, that sounds nice, I'd love to be that girl.'