Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

Women always want to be what they're not: If you're the pretty girl, you want to be the quirky girl. If you're the smart girl, you want to be the pretty girl.

Sometimes, people only change what they look like for the acceptance of other people, and that's where you start going wrong.

I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'

When you become a slave to a public persona and don't feel comfortable without it, it becomes a shield, and it shouldn't come at the expense of your self-worth.

Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts.

You don't realize you're vying for the approval of everyone so much until being yourself is not approved of.

If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us… We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

Looking good has never been the most important thing to me. Maybe it's because I'm more conventionally, um, acceptable, so it's not an issue for me. I don't know.

I'm not worried any more about changing people's view of me.

We're all just trying to fit in and find ourselves, particularly when we're growing up.

Very early on, you figure out that you put your self-esteem in the hands of strangers. There's a different commodity. There's the Helena Bonham Carter that everyone thinks they know, who really has nothing to do with me. But you just have to let that go.

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

We are obsessed with image. I don't think we should take it that seriously.

One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.

I don't see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I'm skinny, as if that's supposed to make me happy.

I'll be me, but I don't like it.

I just didn't believe I was like everybody else. I thought I was unique.

Who you are vs. who you wish you were: Who wins?

I'm still figuring out why people would want to look at me. Maybe it's generic beauty, but it's weird to be valued for something I was born with.

I think it really holds you back having to think about your image.

If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion.

I'm happier on the runway than I am on the red carpet. Because then I am not being myself. I think, on the red carpet, it's a weird, like, 'Who am I? Am I me? Am I them?'

I didn't take myself seriously for a long time.

I don't know if I'm 'normal.'