Hasan M. Elahi Quotes

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.

I think in some ways we have allowed other people to set the agenda. Other people to define who we are.

I think it's somebody else's job to decide what my image is.

I didn't want to have to deal with having any moniker or separation between the self that I see and know myself as.

I have no control whatsoever on how people perceive me from the Right or the Left. All I have control over is who I say I am.

I try not to define myself. Other people are going to do that for you anyway.

There's no such thing as identity: it's something we have to believe in to make life more tolerable.

I love tennis. But even if I become the greatest of all time, I still don't only want to be defined by tennis. I'm my own person. And I want to be remembered as I really am.

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

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

I don't like it when they [media critics] see me as this little person who doesn't know what to do with herself -- like I have no idea what I want, like I'm just a puppet ... That's demeaning to me, because that ain't how it is, and it never was.

You don't get to Define me, only I can Define me, all I wish from you is to recognize my Definition.

My experience is that I find myself having to constantly define myself to others, day-in, day-out. The quote that's helped me the most through that is from Toni Morrison's "Beloved" where she says, "Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined" - so I find myself defining myself for other people lest I be defined by others and stuck into some box where I don't particularly belong.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I'm definitely responsible for the image that I put out there. But it does become frustrating, because I don't want 'sexy' to be my defining characteristic. I'd love for my ambition and will and intellect and sense of humour to define me as well.

You can't ever put your self-definition in the hands of somebody who meets you for 15 minutes.

I don't like defining myself. I just am.

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

I'm determined not to lose my name. It's who I am. It has neither aided my progress nor hampered it. It's just who I am.

I don't put labels on myself.

Whatever labels are being pinned on me have nothing to do with me.

I'm a different person. I don't want to be titled as Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter. I want to be thought of as Frances Cobain.

If you do not define yourself, your opponent will do it for you.

For so long, I just let people surmise what they would about my life and my choices, and other people have written books and told tales.