Ayad Akhtar Quotes

I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I think I spent a lot of my mid-twenties thinking it was a problem of my onstage persona. But, actually, it was my actual personality. I was still working out what kind of person I was.

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

So many people go through life, and they never deal with their own issues, no matter what the issues are - ours happen to be gender identity. But, how many people go through life and just waste an entire life 'cause they'd never deal with themselves to be who they are.

My problem was I let myself become known before I knew myself.

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?

I look back at old photographs and videotapes, and I go, Who was I trying to be? Who was I doing this for?

You can't know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

I sometimes truly despair at ever being meaningfully altered and affected by the things I claim are so important to me.

I would say that playing this character has caused me to think about a lot of things. He's always questioning himself and trying to get back to something he lost touch with and trying to find forgiveness. Everybody struggles with these things to some extent in their life.

Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it's only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and - you know, for instance, my self-loathing.

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

I don't want to be anything other than what I've been trying to be lately.

It's an interesting thing when you discover something about yourself. To go: 'Wow, I'm not the person I thought I was. I'm in the middle of something and I can't actually deal with it.'

One of my problems is to find the self.

Over a long period of time, living as if you were someone else is no fun.

I'm trying to figure myself out through my movies. Whether it's big stuff like what we're doing here, or little stuff like, 'Why aren't I happier?' With every film I feel like I'm apologising for something. I feel I'm most successful when I'm looking for something that embarrasses me about my character that I'd like to expose.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.

In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.

Few things can frustrate us more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; we feel crazy when we try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not.