Peter Hedges Quotes

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.

It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.

She had for so many years been trying to be like other people, that she was now like nothing in heaven or earth.

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.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

Half of the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not.

Ironically, it was because I was raised as a Muslim in the South, that I realised the value in being true to who you really are. I've just got so many things going on inside. I don't know how to resolve all of them other than being true to who I am.

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

I didn't think I could be my imperfect self. I pretended I was Marcia, so I was always playing this role. I became her, but yet I wasn't. It's strange.

Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

I didn't realize that pretending to be this 'Hills Heidi,' this spoiled rich girl who I wasn't, would almost destroy me.

I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.

Something really intense happened to me during the 'SNL' performance. It felt like the person I was made to be faced the person I'm becoming. It was the first time I felt like I was able to make any sense of ownership of my work.

I felt like there were two people inside me. I was trying to be somebody I was not, and I was frustrated that people didn't know who I was.

That image of who I was publicly was so solidified. You're that person. And it wasn't even close to a true representation of where I was in my life.

I felt that just looking at the world in general, there are so many types of people, and some hide who they truly are. And I feel that every person has some kind of warped identity inside them that they decide if they want to show or not.

When you start to realise how much of what you've constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

There is your persona and then there's the real you. I was living inside my persona too much.

The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it.

I'm never quite sure if I'm me when I'm dressed up.

One can only walk so far from one's true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back.

Each time we try to express ourselves we have to break with ourselves.

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.