W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

I have no personality, or I have three, depending on how you look at it.

If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.

I'll be me, but I don't like it.

I look at that person and I'm like, That's not Kelli White. That's not who I am, who I started out to be.

There's a constant struggle between my ears about who I am and what I mean to the world.

When you are born into a body that takes the image of another, you ask yourself a question much like the famous 'chicken and egg' conundrum. Do you take the form of he, or does he take the form of you?

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.

Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?

Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal?

Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.

You can't take yourself too seriously. Like, yeah, I'm doin' all that, but still I don't feel like I've done anything, really. I feel blessed 'cause I'm doin' all these things, but I'm not satisfied. I still have that feeling like, "Who am I? Who am I to have an ego? Who am I to change up and act like some Hollywood character?" Technically, in the grand scheme of things, I haven't done anything.

It's kind of like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you say your name. And it gets to a point where none of it seems real.

Do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and think, something's not accurate?

I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think-try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it.

The world's most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within us. The worst part is, you can't even tell who is who.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

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

I turned myself to face me, but I've never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker.

There are times I can't even figure myself out.