Merle Shain Quotes

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

If I become the man you want, I wouldn't be the man I am.

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 never quite became the monster I wanted to be. I feel mostly monstrous as I more become myself. Because the more you become yourself, the more it disturbs other people.

If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.

I think there's always a conflict within me about being comfortable and secure and then being an individual and fighting for what I want to be on an individual basis.

I don't even know who I am. All I know is that I am the sibling, daughter, sister, the friend of somebody, and I need to know who I am outside of that.

Who are we? Whom do we want to become? How do we perceive ourselves? How do we want to be perceived? These questions of identity are often at the core of our own internal struggles. Resolve them, and you are closer to being free.

I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.

I had a moment a few years ago where I wasn't sure if I was acting for myself or because people expected it of me. A bit of a crisis of faith, I suppose. I did some soul-searching, took a break and decided I was going to live my life only for me.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves.

I’m trying to get away from roles. I used to identify myself strictly in terms of my role, but when your roles fall away, part of you falls with them.

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

I believe so many people live what I call that false identity they are living according to other people's expectations, associations, their experiences, the labels in life. And they buy into that.

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.

I am myself. That is not enough.

We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.

I think you're always policing yourself by trying to do what you think would be "cool" and accepted by other people, until you start to figure out who you really want to be. Growing up is an ongoing push-and-pull of you being yourself and you performing to what society expects you to be.

You can't be a clothes hanger for your entire life.

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

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.

I became so consumed with trying to live up to what the public expected that I lost myself. I don't know of anyone else who can say this.

I think now that I'm in the autumn of my life, and I'm getting a chance of having an overview and looking at the shape of how things happen, when things happen, why things happen, I think it was fitting that I spent most of my early career doing mask work, because I just don't think I was that comfortable in my own skin.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that's not easy.