Ayad Akhtar Quotes

I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.

I like to spread myself out. Since I was a kid, I always recognized some void.

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

The most wonderful thing in the world is somebody who knows who they are and knows where they're going and knows what they were created to do

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

On some level, we as human beings can be who we want to be.

It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are.

The thing that surprises me most is, you cannot change who you are.

I'm on this search trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I have to say to people.

It is not the question, what am I going to be when I grow up; you should ask the question, who am I going to be when I grow up.

Without a musket to raise, a barricade to storm, a flag to wave, the question hit me in the face like the cold air: 'Who am I?'

And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own.

Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

I'm not that tough; I'm not that smart. I need life telling me who I am, showing me my mind constantly. I wouldn't see it in a cave.

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

The experience of the human, male or female, cannot be completely defined by one startling, surprising, or gigantic life experience.

'Who do you think you are?' That's the big one, isn't it? A flourishing life depends on how you answer that.

I can't tell you what your purpose is, that's got to come from you.

You have to look yourself in the eye and ask, 'Who are you?' It can't be all about work.

The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them... and royally squander their lives with her.

When you see what you really are, good or bad, there is a fearlessness to understanding your purpose.

Starting with the lyrics, 'Only scared of myself and the truth in the stars/I'm a king, I'm the dirt, God within me shine,' the first half of '6 Weeks' delves into my attempts to balance the notion that I have an existential purpose with the realization that I am nothing against the vastness of the universe.

I know who I am. And after all these years, there's a victory in that.