Charles de Lint Quotes

They tell me what to wear, how to look, what I should say, how I should be. Until recently I had given into that pressure, I lost sight of who I was. I listened to opinions of people and I tried to change who I am because I thought others would accept me for it. And I realized I don't know how to be anything but myself.

I feel like if I were to play the game completely and just get myself in a giant bottle of nail polish and put myself on display, I would feel like I had somehow cosmically lost. I feel like I'm taking a bunch of the ingredients and using some of them but not all of them and shuffling around and making people think I'm doing my job.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves.

You can't go around being what everyone wants you to be, living your life through other people's rules, and expect to be happy and have inner peace.

I've learned that all you can be in this world is you. No matter how much you mess with yourself, with surgery or you know, clothes or cut your hair differently or how much you wish and pray and dream that you're gonna wake up as someone else, it's never gonna happen. You have one life and one opportunity, and all you can be is the best you.

I'm losing myself trying to compete with everyone else, instead of just being me.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

Well it's hard to be yourself, it's the hardest job there is.

I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.

In my marriages, I'd lost parts of who I was because I was trying to mold myself into what I thought a man wanted me to be.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

You don't want to spend your life explaining yourself.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

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

I've tried not to get too bogged down by what people want you to be.

When you're growing up, the most important thing is to try to not change yourself too much. Be you, because everyone else is taken.

I will not be alone if I am my true self. Only by trading my true self for the companionship of another have I ever made myself alone. Because when I gave up my real self, I wound up resenting my "significant other" for "making me" do that-and it was this resentment that ate away at our relationship.

You cannot fail at being yourself. A cat doesn't try to be a tiger, and you shouldn't try to be something you aren't. You are a process, not a product. Your job is to discover what you are and create that creature. You still won't be perfect, but success isn't about perfection-it is about authenticity. You are a success if you are being your real, authentic self.

Be yourself. If you try to be someone else, it won't work. Whatever you do, you are not going to make everyone happy.

To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.

What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes. The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.

Unhappiness comes when you try to be like everyone else rather than embracing the unique person that you are.

Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn't have given you worse advice.

Being myself didn't work. Being someone else didn't work. Maybe I just wasn't meant to have friends.