John Darnielle Quotes

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.

Actors and actresses who say they never go to see their own pictures are talking through their hats. You don't have to be a Freud to know that the most fascinating person in the world - actors or anybody - is yourself.

I can't stand outside myself and be anybody else.

It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

I've never, ever labeled myself.

Everybody has their own story - it's who you are. If I wasn't five-foot, I wouldn't be who I am!

There's only one person who knows me - and that's me.

Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves.

Above all, know that ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.

I'm a jerk, that's who I am. I'm like everybody else.

People can portray me anyway they want because I don’t give a damn… But don’t you analyze me and don’t you tell me what I am until you get close enough to understand what I am. Then you can make an analysis of me. But don’t you dare do it until then.

Let not a man's self be to him all in all.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

My personality doesn't interest me.

My family, in a way, gives me a reference as to who I am as an individual, and my work gives me a reference as to who I am as a Homo sapiens. I think that's a very perfect match, in my view.

I think Zippy is part of me, but I'm not Zippy.

When I was younger, my father told me not to pigeonhole the way that I perceive myself.

People have to learn who they are - you can't have somebody else telling you who you are.

I have always felt that I am the sum total of my parts.