Rosanne Cash Quotes

You get tough when you grow up unloved. People described me as a boyish girl - rather shy, but I didn't show it. I had an attitude. I was rather wild. I lied a lot because I knew the alternative was to be punished. As I got older I realised I didn't have to lie any more and it was a nice feeling. I could be myself.

She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that somewhere in another place entirely she was known and loved.

It seems as though I've always been,somebody outside looking in,well, here I am for all of them to bleed,but they can't take my heart from me,and they can't bring me to my knees,they'll never know the real me.

If you keep changing for every person who tells you to, then who's going to be left? Why get the success and be somebody else?

Early in my career I was divided because I had the real self underneath: the lawbreaker, the anarchist, the person who swims against the tide, the outsider, the loner, all of that guy. He was my private self, and I had this other side that wanted to be liked in order to do all those things I dreamed of as a little boy. I didn't realize that those things didn't go together until later. And I'm quite sure that my use of acid and peyote helped me accept what was really going on inside of me instead of what I had imposed on myself.

For years I've wanted to live according to everyone else's morals. I've forced myself to live like everyone else, to look like everyone else. I said what was necessary to join together, even when I felt separate. And after all of this, catastrophe came. Now I wander amid the debris, I am lawless, torn to pieces, alone and accepting to be so, resigned to my singularity and to my infirmities. And I must rebuild a truth-after having lived all my life in a sort of lie.

At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.

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

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

It has cost me a great deal to become myself. I don't want to be another person.

I think it's good to explore it. I don't feel bad about that... I mean, I think everyone has a sense of - has a dark side, has a - carries some sort of pain with them. And I find it fun to crack it open and go there.

We live in a culture where people are constantly telling us how to get what we want, and within that message is, 'You need to be something other than you are.'

The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.

I know who I am. And after all these years, there's a victory in that.

Identity is not negotiable. An identity you have achieved by agreement is always a prison.

The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it.

If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

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.

It is trying to be other than one's self that unmans one. Be your own natural self and go ahead.

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.