Daniel Day-Lewis Quotes

I had to find the courage to turn my life around.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.

It's taken me a long time to become the person I am, for all the ugliness to fall away. The rotten flesh is gone, and the seed is there. I can touch that now.

My demons, inner strengths and physical battles have guided me through life.

In a sense, 'Out of Oz' is an examination of how individuals keep going, keep reinventing themselves and their lives, even after life-altering complications have afflicted them.

I think I'm in the best place I've ever been in so many ways. I've just come out of five years of very difficult times for numerous reasons and yet at the same time it's lead to such growth. It's very exciting that way.

When I reflect on the losses I've experienced, I've come to believe that those experiences were transformative, that they shaped who I am.

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

The grief and tears didn't wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet.

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.

There have been many people for whom limitations, failure, loss, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility and compassion. It made them more real.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

There's a type of freedom that occurs when everything that you've believed in and worked for is shattered, because then you have the opportunity to rebuild and to put yourself back together in a new way.

It feels like some part of me that was curled down and waiting in the dark has risen, and now stands stretching and strong in the sunshine. I knew it.

I love failure. It's stuff that I'm thinking about all the time in my life, so it would make sense to me anyway to write about it.

If it were not for the bad things that've happened to me, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

There have been many times in my life when I felt like I'd never pick up the pieces, but God has always given me the power to do it.

You find yourself in this place where you really get to find out what you're made of, and what I found was that when I was at my time of greatest need, there were people who appeared in my life, and helped me through it.

In retrospect, I'm grateful for the break-up of my marriage because it forced me to deal with all the buried issues I probably wouldn't have otherwise faced. I'm a better, kinder, happier person today because of the spiritual and emotional growth I've experienced.

There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.

I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory.

I had lost a clear sense of the vision and values instilled in me as a child and was no longer driven by any mission or passion. I made the difficult decision to pull back from the noise of my life and reinvent the way I was living and leading.

I guess I'm in a state of becoming. Even though I've had a full career and I've been around a long time, it's like dinosaurs are coming back. It's all new. I'm having to be on my own and seeing how exciting life can be now.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.