John Edgar Wideman Quotes

I have never yet figured out what to do about good advice that you get, and that you know right away would help you, but that you cannot follow.

I am still a person with a sense of superficiality that I'm trying to challenge.

We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale.

Bob Smith from Brooklyn is a guy who sometimes gets hung with problems and fears. Wolfman Jack is a happy-go-lucky guy who knows how to party. The challenge of my life has been letting more and more of Bob Smith go, becoming the Wolfman on an almost full-time basis, while still taking care of business.

I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it.

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.

I have a lot of growing up to do, or a lot of growing down. I think that's probably more appropriate.

I got a lot of paradoxes in my life. I guess I'm a real confused person, but there are some focused parts to my life now, and I'm slowly trying to put all the pieces back together.

A man's conflicts represent what he 'really' is.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

I think many people have contradictions to them and I love characters that deal with those contradictions.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.

I know who Jack Whittaker is. And some days I don't like who I am.

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Sometimes you have to be very bad before you can be very good.

I never thought my life was worth vlogging.

I'm not trying to erase my culture or my faith, I'm trying to be the best version of myself, and it's really hard. I don't think I'm right, I don't claim to be correct, I'm just trying to figure it out and figure out a balance.

No matter what you do in life, it's always a struggle, to first of all find who you are.

Rose, I'm an addict with no work ethic who is likely going to go insane. I'm not like you. I'm not a super-hero." "Not yet," I said.

I took his wildness from him and tried to fold it into myself, filling up the empty spaces all those second place finishes left behind.

I wanted to be good but I wasn't sure if I was prepared

I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.