Chris Abani Quotes

Who are we but the stories we tell about ourselves, particularly if we accept them?

People are the story they tell themselves.

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

As human beings, we are nothing but the stories we live and die by — so you’d better be careful what stories you tell yourself.

we become the stories we tell ourselves

The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves makes us who we are.

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

I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.

And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.

We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories.

I think everyone self-mythologizes.

Some people want to define themselves, and they should, as it's part of their identity. For me personally, I've never really had a label for myself.

We're all the stories we tell ourselves.

I know what my identity is.

As we grow up, we're constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self.

I want to be a part of stories.

Any story that you tell about yourself causes suffering. There is no authentic story.

The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one's self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

What do you know about yourself? What are your stories? The ones you tell yourself, and the ones told by others. All of us begin somewhere. Though I suppose the truth is that we begin more than once; we begin many times. Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.

I think we're always in the process of writing and rewriting the story of our lives, forming our experiences into a narrative that makes sense. Much of that work involves demythologizing family myths and cultural myths - getting free of what we have been told about ourselves.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!

Human beings absolutely follow through on who they believe they are