Chris Cleave Quotes

When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.

I think I'm still trying to find my voice as a filmmaker and finding stories to tell.

Hopefully my fan base doesn't lock me into 'Twilight,' you lose yourself. You should do things for you, and I have been really lucky to have things that really rock me and really move me falling into my lap.

I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

I saw myself as a writer, a novelist, even though I was living the life of a mother and housewife. Writing was - and is - what I do.

I went through some tough times because if you're used to having a voice in contemporary culture and all of sudden, you don't have that voice, you don't have that outlet. I didn't appreciate that. I didn't understand how important that was to me. And all of a sudden, after investing all this time and energy, I had no identity. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I had to say. I didn't have a way to say it. It was very painful.

But it does make me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are.

We are not ourselves anymore, we've lost a little something.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

Ruin still used Reen's voice-it was familiar, something that had always seemed a part of her. Discovering that it belonged to that thing...it was like finding out that her reflection really belonged to someone else, and that she'd never actually seen herself.

It's very easy I think when you're a creative person to wait for the right thing and to start getting self-conscious about how you are going to express what you do and what's special about you. I would say in general, a lot of times the answer is that you just dive into something and you find your own voice through that process.

The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the filthiest word in the language. Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do - and makes you what you are - is to back up into the grave.

Once you don't have freedom and you're obliged to do many things you don't want, and it becomes a routine, then your identity is at stake because you can feel that you are not anymore yourself, that you are what they want you to be - and you can lose yourself.

Retirement is a one-way trip to insignificance.

But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself

For instance, I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting, because that's how I see life. I'm interested in art, poetry, and music. As that kind of artist, I can do anything. I can say anything. It's about self-expression. It knows no package - there's no such thing. That's what being an artist is.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.

We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.

I have this identity for myself as a writer and the only thing that can happen is that I chip away from it.

You will face boredom and frustration your entire career as artists. You will be very frustrated seeking a voice/style that collectors can connect with. Once you accomplish that voice/style people are clamoring for, you will become bored doing it.

Sometimes it'll happen to people, that their self will stop coming through. And people will just cease to understand them.

If you're familiar enough with my body of work, my voice is a familiar totem, in a sense. I guess I have something characteristic in the way that I sing, although I'm not very personally self-conscious about it, so I don't think about it that much. But when I hear the record I can tell it's me.

I've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.

I used to be somebody. Now I’m somebody else.