Isak Dinesen Quotes

I think it's important to have your own individual style and sense of self. It's kind of what I do.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

You blows who you is.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that's always existed.

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

I'm not going to be able to play it like somebody else.

Everyone has to decide how they're going to appear in their lives, how they're going to put themselves out there to the world.

Of course, I can't be like Gary Hooper or anyone else because I'm me.

I am who I am. I'm unique. I'm my own self.

I've been working on the way my originality, my body, my face, my original form is perceived by me.

Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You're not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him; you can't relive his career. You can't just have somebody else's career. You have to be you.

Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies?

I always say that you are who you are and you can't hide it.

If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.

A bad rendition of you is better than a good rendition of somebody else.

Don't imitate. If you want to know who you are, please avoid imitation, that's a way of avoiding knowing yourself.

What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes. The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

I think being appropriate is what you have to do. I think these trend things are terrible, like 'Ten Things You Must Have.' Why must you have them? They're a 'must' for some people, but for some they're not. It's silly. Again, it's all a matter of knowing who you are. You'll never run out of ideas once you do. But it's hard work and some people don't want to put in the time or effort. So they don't. And that's their issue. I don't sit in judgment on how they look.

Every director is themselves; [they're] not playing a part.

When people say 'I want to be like you', I tell them if you want to be like me, then be yourself.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different. I lost that fear. And once I felt the power that I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.

I play myself on everything I do.