Adam Rapp Quotes

I draw inspiration from everything I've seen and been through. My life has been my biggest teacher.

Sometimes it takes failure to figure out who you aren't.

I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us, but to be able to have that clarity of experience that changes us, so that we know who we are now because of who we have been at some other time.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.'

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

You learn a lot about yourself when you have success for a while. Like, a lot of things that you think are really important aren't. But you need that process.

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths.

Everything in life is about timing. I've been able to have my experiences and learn from them and kind of figure out the thing that works for me and is best for me, and that's all I can really say.

Sometimes it's the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.

You've got to live life to write a book about it.

The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

When I'm out having the experiences, that's exactly what I'm doing: having the experiences. Then I can later reflect and write.

Each film has taught me something new - be it about myself, my craft, my profession, people.

I think that no matter how old you get, you are always learning about yourself.

We're all reflections of the lives we lead.

How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

Experience teaches us, but we scarcely know what.

The nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.

I learned from my past.

After a long run of almost thirty years, you get to the point where you say, 'These are my concerns.' It's not so much this is what I set out to claim - it is a kind of refrain.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

You discover yourself through the research of your work.

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.