Stephen Malkmus Quotes

I love my hair. When I was young it had weird kinks and cowlicks in it, but I just grew into it. You grow into a lot of things.

I think you sort of shed skins as you go along in life. You get into your 40s, and you feel like, 'OK, no more pretending.' You get to just be who you are.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turn into confident ducks.

I was shy and didn't believe in myself, and I only bloomed when I was in theater during rehearsal. And that's how my family found out that that's where I needed to be, because that's where I felt the most comfortable.

There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.

I would say Will came at a time in my life where he saw beauty in me that I didn't see in myself at the time. And, you know, he saw a diamond in the rough and kind of, picked me up and blew off all the dust and said, 'I'm telling you, I'm going to make you shine, girl.'

I was a milksop as a kid. I had no confidence, no guts. I felt I was going to be someone else someday - someone who didn't have my weaknesses.

In the beginning, I was worried there are too many shots of me as a boy out there. Now I'm at a point where I know my past doesn't make me any less of a woman today. I can be proud of it. I don't have to bury it.

'Hedwig' is not autobiographical, but what she goes through is clearly a big metaphor. She doesn't want to be what she is, but she comes to an understanding that what happened to her has actually made her whole.

I'm actually thrilled with the woman I'm turning out to be.

When you are in high school, you don't give much thought to what you can't do. For most people, that gets learned later, and for still fewer, gets unlearned for the rest of life.

We can't just go, like, oh that'd be cool then not do it. So it's one of those weird things. You gain all these things on your journey. You get smarter. It's interesting how you are who you are in high school in a lot of ways. When I look at my friends, I feel no different about them than I did when I was in high school. I mean that in a great way. They've taken on a micro scale what they were doing and making it bigger.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

High school is a really strange time - you're not a kid, you're not an adult. You're about to be an adult, you're going to have to make some really intense decisions. It's a really pivotal time to have as much self-confidence as you possibly can. Even if that means you have one friend who supports you completely.

When I was in High School I fell for pretty much any girl I ever met. But I was so desperate that I couldn't get any of them because they sensed my desperation! After many, many years, I learned to relax and just be myself.

I was never the cool kid, I was never hot in high school. I was never popular. You don't have to be perfect and you don't have to be rich and you can still be successful.

I was like, 'What is this?' Until I found out it was stress related. That's how I internalized it. I don't do that anymore. My favorite saying in the world is, 'The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.' I am telling you, I have spent so much of my life not feeling comfortable in my skin. I am just so not there anymore.

I figured out the only way to get women in high school was not to care that much. Now I realize that you have to live your life and eventually they'll be attracted to you and you'll be attracted to them and it will just happen. I think. I think.

Becoming yourself is really hard and confusing, and it's a process. It's often not cool to be the person who puts themselves out there.

I feel that in all kids that I've came across, that at the age of 12-13 is a big transition . They begin forming the Young Adult there going to become, here molding . I can't put a "name" on it but it's something. Your trying to find yourself, were getting ready to go to High School and as this world teaches you, you must "belong" to something. (So we Belong to Something)

You will make a lousy anybody else, but you will be the best "you" in existence.

To the sky, I rise / Spread my wings, and fly / I leave the past behind / And say goodbye to the scared child inside / I sing for freedom, and for love / I look at my reflection / Embrace the woman I've become / The unbreakable lotus in me / I now set free

A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes.

I was probably not the first to lose my virginity among my friends. I was definitely one of the last ones to reach puberty - I didn't grow until the last couple years of high school.

We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks.