Robin Hobb Quotes

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

There is your persona and then there's the real you. I was living inside my persona too much.

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.

You can spend time self-identifying and figuring out what you are on that, but at some point, you just want to be who you are and not walk around telling people.

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

Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced.

I understand that nobody understands me, but I can't be someone I'm not.

I still haven't found the place where I can be my true self. But maybe you never get to be your true self, either.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don't know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.

Your false self is always that which is passing away. Your true self doesn't go up or down, it's constant - it's a rock. Once you learn how to live there, what others say about you, your failures or successes - these don't send you on a roller coaster ride down or up. It's really the only way to peace. There's no other way to be peaceful except in the true self.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

Be who you are. Otherwise, you end up committing suicide. You end up marrying people when you shouldn't be marrying them and having terrible, secret lives.

Ironically, it was because I was raised as a Muslim in the South, that I realised the value in being true to who you really are. I've just got so many things going on inside. I don't know how to resolve all of them other than being true to who I am.

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.

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 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.

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

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

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.

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.

People aren't defined by their relationship. The whole point is being true to yourself and not losing yourself in relationships, whether romances or friendships.

What 'Survivor' is really about is the inescapability of your being yourself, even when you have told yourself you can be someone different for 30 days.