Robert Fitzgerald Quotes

What thoughts are to the individual, art is to the community as a whole. That's where you reflect on who you are, who you hope to be, what you've gone through, and where you hope to go.

Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self.

I think, for me, it has been important to remain 'Petra from Fulnek.'

I don't want to get so lost in thinking about me and talking about me all the time in interviews. It's so nice to unwind and just look at other things and get out of yourself. It's hard to detach myself from myself without neglecting myself. You know what I mean? I don't want to get in to the habit of thinking about my career because when it comes down to it, it's not really that important. I could die tomorrow and the world would go on.

I wonder how I seem to them. They must see someone I don't see. Someone capable and strong. Someone I can't be; someone I can be.

We read books to find out who we are.

I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.

The question 'Who am I?' is not an idle one. How you answer the question will determine how you live the rest of your life. It will determine the quality of your life.

Am I the woman I think I am, the woman I want to be? More importantly, am I the woman the Savior needs me to be?

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.

The only person with you all your life is you. Your parents die. Things inside you die — illusions, gushes of personality. Only you can sort yourself out. Yourself may not be all you need, but it’s all you’ve got.

Everybody has to know where they're coming from, what they're doing, why they're doing it, who they are. These are essentials.

No matter where you go, you always see yourself in the rearview mirror.

The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.

Even going through the motions is a way of establishing a new relationship with our inner life that is caring and tender, versus one that is judging, distancing or ignoring. This is the beginning of being capable of intimacy with others.

Being away from home gave me the chance to look at myself with a jaundiced eye. I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge, something I had always tried to hide, and I came home glad to start in here again with a love for Europe that I am afraid will never leave me.

You really have to begin by figuring out what kind of person you are. The tip is to really take a look at yourself.

How can we know ourselves by ourselves? . . . Soul needs intimate connection, not only to individuate, but simply to live. For this we need relationships of the profoundest kind through which we can realize ourselves, where self-revelation is possible, where interest in and love for soul is paramount.

First you have to know who you are. That is the most important thing, as if you don't know who you are you will either get swallowed up or you follow some unsuitable trends and just become a nonentity.

I have never seen myself as leading for others. What's important is that I know who I am. Not completely. But I'm coming around third base.

I have no more idea now of who I am than I did before. But at least I know that. And I'm starting to figure out who I want to be.

You have to self-reflect. If you forget who you actually are, then what's the use of even looking in the mirror.

We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.

I took a lot from friends, but also me.