Stephen Colbert Quotes

Actually, in my own life I think I probably feign neuroses to be more interesting than I am.

If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive

Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?

I like to make things. It's been part of my identity since I was a kid.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

Others will always seek to define you based on what they think you represent or who they think you are. But you have to be the one to control what you do and what you say and how you present yourself.

In first grade, I told my friends I had a third story in my house filled with jewels and lions.

To me, it's really not about how I look - it's about who I can be. It is my job to bring the character to life and my duty to fit into the jigsaw in that story.

I was obsessed with the Canadian novel 'Anne of Green Gables'. I decided I was Anne of Green Gables. There was something that spoke to me about her, and I wanted to have her beautiful red hair.

I mean, I am my own fantasy.

I adore falseness. I don't want you to tell me accurately what happened yesterday. I want you to lie about it, to exaggerate, to entertain me.

All writing is propaganda for the self.

Don't let others define you. You define yourself.

Most people, it seems, stretch the truth to make themselves seem more impressive. I, it seems, stretch the truth to make myself look worse.

Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing

Everyone is necessarily the hero of their own imagination.

Everybody wants to be loved by everybody, and they'll do everything they can to be loved, including not be who they really are, from person to person.

We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories.

People say I make up wild stories. But all I have to do is write down stuff that really happens.

Nobody forced me to look any way. I just exaggerated what was already there.

I didn't have to listen to nobody or look how anybody wanted me to look. I just wanted to be myself and look however I want.

To costume yourself in the way that you fantasize, to make that a reality, and then to go right into the universe looking like an exceptional being takes a lot of courage.

I wanted people to know just who I am and what I'm all about and what actually happened. And to remind people that I had a life before Clint, and I intend to have one after.

I'm not a camp, throwaway queen; I'm not in Neverland. I'm not Jennifer Lopez with three people to pluck my eyebrows. I've made myself what I want to be - not everybody's cup of tea. And people wanna have a look at me. I fully accept that. People have always wanted to have a look at me.

I didn't want anyone to have control over how people saw me. I wanted to have that power myself.