Alain de Botton Quotes

All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

The road back from degradation begins with self-awareness - and sometimes, as in 'Phone Booth,' change can begin with a single phone call.

After ten albums, I can reevaluate my life. Maybe then I'll settle down.

Everything has changed for me since I've changed my name. It's one thing to be called Prince but it's better to actually be one. I have such a reverence for life.

As a character, it's very interesting to play someone who wants to change their life and have him change it.

In the deepest realm of being, is the imagination of ourselves. What is your next evolutionary leap? What are you imagining, (for yourself) right now?

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.

I went through a change in my life and my career where I finally understood how to train and prepare. I finally understood what it meant, and I've had so many fantasies about being able to go back and be 16 again. And redo parts of my high school career. Redo all of my college career. Redo my attempt to make an Olympic team.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become.

Our culture is so obsessed with the idea that you're going to go through a crisis or some difficult event and come out the other side a changed or improved person, and I just think that if you're honest, that often does not happen, and in fact, it shouldn't happen.

Sixty felt like a big landmark. Not in a dreadful sense, but none of the other birthdays have bothered me. It's got labels on it - OAP, retirement - and I just wanted to take stock. I wanted to be in my greenhouse at home and at least give myself the opportunity of not working again.

The romantic idealism of my youth has been replaced with realism and hard work at what I love.

I've changed my life in a lot of ways. I'm a mom, a wife, and a Christian. Some of the things I expressed in my early 20s aren't what I care to express right now.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me.

I've had a great metamorphosis in my life. I struggled for a number of years because I was identified with that image of the Seventies.

After years of making wrong decisions in my life, in 1977 I found out that it was all right to be square, simple, and sober.

I came home after a year and although my profession was only hairdressing, I knew I could change it.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

I totally changed my life, changed my lifestyle.

I lost 100 pounds and embraced theater and music as what I was going to make for the rest of my life.

I never knew what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.

Thirty was a big deal for me. It was the age where I reevaluated everything - how I approached life and how I thought about myself. When I look at my 20s, or when I look at any period in my life, I think about how much time I've wasted trying to find the right man.

Bernard and I intend doing a lot with our lives and that includes actively helping other people. But how can we tell you our plans when we haven't finished making them yet?

All novelists I speak to about how they started usually say it was by pulling up their roots and going to live somewhere else. You see the shape of your life at a distance.