Alison McGhee Quotes

The only journey is the one within.

To travel is to take a journey into yourself.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

I want people to find their inner depth.

We can't see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I'm forever trying to figure out what my own truth is.

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.

The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.

How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.

The world will find out that part of your character which concerns it: that which especially concerns yourself, it will leave for you to discover.

I used to be too subjective, and I was always tempted to find my inner self in the exterior and dissipate my imagination on other people and on life.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

Think... of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.

To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute.

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

I think and that is all that I am.

When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted with himself.

Like all of my fictions, 'Sinner' is a mirror. Look into it and you will find yourself. What you do with what you see is your choice.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

Much of the time, we're transfixed by all of the ways we can reflect ourselves into the world. And we can barely find the time to reflect deeply back in on our own selves.

In my book, I was trying to get into my own soul.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.