Sidney Poitier Quotes

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

To me, at forty-four years old, my book was a search for truth and identity.

My life has been such a blur since I was 18, 19 years old. I haven't even had time to contemplate my own life. By forcing yourself to write your life story you learn a great deal about yourself.

There's a point when your tape of life runs off the reel and there's this stillness of your own - I got to know myself.

I don't know about an awful lot of stuff. I'm not educated. I left school when I was 16, with no qualifications. The thing that I do know about is my feelings and what I think of the world and what I think of me.

I don't put myself into the category of 'rock star writing his biography.' That's because we live our lives by falling into experiences. Things happen to us. Something you do takes hold of you, and then you do a lot of it.

I see the ups and downs. I see the mistakes I've made. I see a funny person. I see a serious person. I see a diamond. I see the good times. I see the bad times. And I see knowledge of self. I see knowledge of self. I know who I am. When I look in the mirror, I see me.

...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)

Above all you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world.

I started to like my voice - the sound of it. So then I started to listen to it as something separate. To me, it sounded good that way as well.

An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

The existence is a tremendous curiosity, with in the course of the years, the discovery of yourself in your inmost evolutions. With the age you feel better than you are, what you represent. Which means a little at the planet's scale.

You know, let a few years go by until I hit my midlife crisis. Then that can be documented on film.

My personality doesn't interest me.

Beyond just writing about falling in love and out of love and wanting to do certain things and going out and partying and all the things that I grew up writing about, I want to write about deeper things.

Some lessons take years to learn, with repeated exposure to the same path sometimes shadowed by the inner conscience of own souls. But eventually we learn, and our journey continues in another direction.

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

My inspiration comes from my real life experiences.

Everyone has their own different life experiences which make them who they are. No two people's life experiences are the same. And mine are just unique to me.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

I felt that with 'In A Perfect World' I was still kind of finding myself - not just as a musician, but also in love and in life.

In the beginning Remo is a very New York street cop who changes and is changed as he moves along.

People say, 'What if your name was Niki Smith?' Well, if Niki Smith lived the life I've lived, it would have great bearing.

We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves.