Gus Van Sant Quotes

Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.

In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'

In the last couple of years I've been facing down a lot of the demons of the past and trying to find out, who I am, It's something I think I'll be doing for the rest of my life.

The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

Early on, I played one or two disturbed people, and I guess I must have been good at it, because it stuck. But, you know, I'm a regular guy. I stay home a lot, I make an effort to keep a distance from the whole social thing, the openings, the parties. I try to live in a calm way.

I didn't want to repeat my mistakes so I stopped, took some time out and started having therapy. My songs were bringing up feelings inside of me I didn't really understand, so I wanted to understand where they were coming from to help me be a better person and a better songwriter.

I have stepped off the relationship scene to come to terms with myself. I have spent most of my adult life being 'someone's girlfriend', and now I am happy being single.

The two records are very different. I guess, on the second record, that's more where I was at. Its not that I'm more well-adjusted or anything, it's just that what I wanted to sing about maybe was more the way I wanted to feel.

I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.

Being alone & actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives.

Like everybody, I've had a lot of pain in my life and I'm a work in progress. You must have a true desire to see the world from a different point of view, and that comes with growing up.

I've done thousands of interviews in my life, and it's a format that I quite enjoy, because I think of questions in interviews as an opportunity to sort of gauge my growth in a way. It gives me an idea of how I'm navigating this world that I'm in.

I've been in therapy. I know enough about myself now to know that I really don't need to know anymore.

Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.

It's a big theme in my life, learning about myself and being a better person. I'm a work in progress; I have revelations every day.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.

Life has brought me work to do on myself these past two years.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.

People think being alone is a luxury, but it's crucial: Whatever you're not down with about yourself gets loud and in your face.