Gene Wolfe Quotes

Really, in a way, I took over the male role.

I have always been interested in the idea of self-reinvention.

You know, Motorcycle Diaries has no incredible stories, no sudden plot twists, it doesn't play that way. It's about recognizing that instance of change and embracing it.

I had to find the courage to turn my life around.

I've changed my music from time to time so I'm hoping that I can completely change my life from time to time, too. Like live in another land, in another place, and just get completely soaked up in another way of being. Could be in this country or another country, somewhere were you can be reborn a number of times not just creatively, but personally as well. I guess I want to go through life as more than one person.

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself.

Most of my films deal with people who are stuck in certain routines and habits that don't make them happy. They want to change, but they need something to push them. I think it's mostly love that causes them to break their routines and move on.

Things happen in my physical body, in my relationships. I've buried three fathers and a mother. I've had a doctor tell me I've got a tumor in my brain. And when you face those situations, they transform you, they change you, and when you're able to break through them to a new level, they allow you to have gifts to give other people.

There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is.

The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.

I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be—strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I’d walk and think about my entire life. I’d find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.

The solution begins with a deeper transformation that must occur in each of us. I AM isn’t as much about what you can do, as who you can be. And from that transformation of being, action will naturally follow.

Life is strange. You keep moving and keep growing. Before you know it, you look back and think, "What was that?"

Sometimes the warrior feels as if he were living two lives at once. 'There is a bridge that links what I do with what I would like to do,' he thinks. Slowly, his dreams take over his everyday life, and then he realises that he is ready for the thing he always wanted. Then all that is needed is a little daring, and his two lives become one.

We all hope for breakthrough rebirth moments. When you're headed for a breakthrough moment, it's kind of scary because you say, 'If I break through then I have to make great change in my life.'

I kept asking myself if I felt different, if I was different. The answer was always yes. I was no longer nothing… How odd, I thought; it had taken my mother’s death, Father Quinel’s murder, and the desire of others to kill me to claim a life of my own.

Sometimes life is so crazy, you have to go through something to be able to find out what you're supposed to talk about next, and I think that's what happened to me.

I think the biggest shift for me is - this is going to sound like a wanky actor, but - getting in touch with, and learning to not just appreciate, but actually really enjoy being a woman. Because for so long I was a jock, and I was an athlete, and I was a tomboy, and people would joke about like, fancy dress, you should go as a girl.

Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

I love change, and I love changing my hair. But it was strange to look in the mirror and think 'Who is this girl?'

You can't find that moment when you became somebody else, because everything is in flux. So as it were, the torturous period where you are changing, you are transforming - I think that can be very hard on somebody's system. You don't necessarily realize that is what's happening.

You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I’m finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you’ve . . . rested me.And don’t you dare tell me you’ve stopped loving me back, because you’re still a better person than I am, and I’m counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours.

There's a cave, we go inside of ourselves because we want to know more, and we turn this one corner and we go, Oh my god - I didn't know that was in here. We can never go back to the way we were. It's like a horrible car accident - you're never the same after that. It's something that you'll think about every day for the rest of your life.

I think life goes through a cycle of losing and refinding yourself all the time. Everyone has disappointments all the time, some of them pretty small, some of them pretty big.

You changed my life. You changed my ways. I don't even recognize myself these days. It must be a reflection of you, only you.