Judith Guest Quotes

The idea is that in any situation, people have a notion as to who they are and how they should behave. And if you don't behave according to your identity, you pay a cost.

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

It's funny: people who meet me say, 'I thought you'd be different.' But I'm still the same guy.

But people who do not know me are surprised to see me as a real person I guess.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

I'm not much of a numbers guy, and yet that's the way I'm defined a lot.

People who experience themselves as authentic are also experiencing themselves as myth, but that's not the narrative they're going with.

The real self and the public self are intertwined, like a tumor around an organ, and you can't cut the tumor or you'll kill the organ, so they live together, until the tumor chokes the organ off - but which self is the tumor?. Or it's like something out of Star Trek. The Borg.

That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

All my life, everybody has seen me a certain way. What do you see?

... that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.Persons appear byentering into relationwith other persons.

That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.

The stuff that I have perhaps become known for that's based on fact, and English statesmen shouting at each other all the time, doesn't entirely represent who I am. I am not a politics wonk.

Suddenly people were saying I was cocky because I'd done a Steven Spielberg movie and thought I was better than everyone else, which surprised me at first. I suddenly started feeling like a freak because everyone was treating me differently. It was confusing, and I did wonder if acting was for me anymore.

But most of us who aren't models aren't models, right? And so, you just have to get used to that and sort of read right past it. So. On the sex symbol piece, I don't get that piece. On the personality piece, that people are excited to meet a leader from Mozilla - maybe there's more about meeting me personally than I give credit for, but I find that people are excited about what Mozilla is, more than 'Oh my god, there's Mitchell, look, her hair,' whatever.

If you are aware that people are coming to you to receive your gift and not necessarily to you as the person, it keeps you very humble. Many people make the mistake of confusing the attraction of people to their lives as something that has to do with them as a person or a personality, and this is very dangerous and not true.

I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you'll find in this world.

I think the fact that I am gay is about the 47th most interesting thing about me.

Think of all the women you know who will not allow themselves to be seen without makeup. I often wonder how they feel about themselves at night when they are climbing into bed with intimate partners. Are they overwhelmed with secret shame that someone sees them as they really are? Or do they sleep with rage that who they really are can be celebrated or cared for only in secret?

Kids want acceptance from their peers, but in two different, opposing ways: They want to be like everyone else and they want to be different from everyone else. So the question is: How do you reconcile these opposing longings?

It doesn’t matter how much you love someone, you are never going to be what that person wants you to be.