Zadie Smith Quotes

It is not pride when the beech-tree refuses to copy the oak. He knows his limitations. The only chance of any healthy life for him is to be as full a beech-tree as he can.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.

If you're able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.

You've got to be oblivious to other people, the push and pull of other people's opinions, the way other people measure success. It's then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things.

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?

Please, please, PLEASE be yourself. If you catch yourself not, take a step back.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

I think that more and more there's a sense that the best performances I can give are the ones that are the truest to who I am. The further I move away from who I am, the worse they are.

'Cars 2' is about a character learning to be himself. There's times in our lives where people always say, 'Well, you've gotta act differently. You should always be yourself.' That's the emotional core of the story.

It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

I'd like people to understand that I do have some personality.

What we must try to be, of course, is ourselves and wholeheartedly. We must find out what we really are and what we really want.

No matter how widely spread out the films are, how different, you still are you.

I wanted to become me, totally me. The more me, the better. I instinctively knew this and I was right.

I'll never be August Wilson - but what I can be is more of myself.

I don't want to look exactly the same in everything I do. And if I'm not identifiable, then that can be a blessing or a curse. But I'm fine with it. Because at the end of the day, I'm still working, and I'm enjoying what I do.

I can't be anybody but myself.

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself.

Everyone kept telling me, Just be yourself. Be yourself. I kept thinking, there's got to be more to it than that!

Get to know the real you, rather than try to look like or dress like those around you.