Annie Proulx Quotes

I can only be who I am.

It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

I think a person has to just be herself.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

I think, personally, it's our flaws that define us to us - or maybe it's just me.

I attempt to be who I am and it's fun. At the same time, growing up doing what I'm doing can be a little crazy.

Anyone who knows who God made them to be will never try to be someone else.

Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image

I think that it doesn't matter if I travel all over the place. I'll always be a normal teenager on the inside. It always depends on how you act yourself, not what happens to you. That's my view of it all.

It's much more interesting to embrace who you really are rather than waste energy pretending to be someone else.

You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

What we live with is ourselves. And when you have your own identity you are much easier to live with.

Always try to be yourself.

Savor what you are and not what everyone else wants you to be.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

I think people who struggle to define themselves might never be satisfied because there is no definition. Living with responsibility is important, but I don't really think you have to grow up.

It's no use trying to be different than you are.

God will never help us be anyone other than ourselves.

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

I would get songs sung to me, like 'Old Man River, 'or kids would call me Mississippi and things like that. At the time, I wished I had a name that blended in more with my surroundings. Now, though, I've really learned to love it. From fifteen, I really liked it. It felt appropriate. Before that, I don't think it quite fitted me. I had to grow into it.

The society wants you to have beautiful personalities; the society wants you to have personalities which are comfortable for the society, convenient for the society. But the person is not the real thing, the individual is the real thing. The individual is not necessarily always comfortable to the society - in fact he is very inconvenient.