Jenny Zhang Quotes

If I'd trusted myself and listened to myself all the times that I ignored myself, I would have been fine. But everyone has to learn their lesson, and now I've got it.

I have never dissected my personal life. What sense would it make?

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition.

I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.

One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.

Yeah, it is, because it's a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That's what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost.

If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you.

I definitely have come out of my shell a lot more. When you question who you are, you can't be proud of who you are. Now that I'm trying to peel off those layers and really understand who I am, I don't have anything to be shy about.

I had to go off to do my own thing, to get my confidence as a writer, and a performer.

When I was kid, I couldn't wait to take the world by storm, to be a woman - beautiful, powerful, confident, sexy, thoughtful, and deep. All the things I knew I was inside... even though I was only 4.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me.

There's a confidence and sense of self that comes with age that I didn't anticipate.

The word 'empower' is something that kept coming up in my heart.

It was through poetry I learned just to appreciate my own voice and to not think of my voice in terms of what it needs to be able to do, but what it can do.

If I can learn how to rely on my own strength, I can see the answers to my problems usually lie right there, within the problem itself.

You cannot learn what you are made of if you rely on anyone or anything else to help you.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

You can't wait for people to tell you; you have to know yourself.

I mean, what do you think creativity is? Nothing but self-indulgence. And the more self-indulgent it is, the more interesting it becomes. So I think that part of creativity is also falling in love with your own narcissism: accepting it, using it as an asset.

Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that's the foundation for everything great.

For a memoir to really succeed, the author has to do such hard work before they come to the page. They have to do a brutal self-examination of everything they believe to be true.

Growing up, when I was younger, I didn't feel all that tough or smart or strong. As I got older, I was able to discover my own strength.

Good things will come from self-expression.