Personal Discovery Quotes

I think maybe the vehicle for me was 'Sam Cooke's Greatest Hits.' It has a song called, 'Touch the Hem of His Garment.' Do you know that song? I kind of got obsessed with that song and started exploring and getting more of his old recordings with the Soul Stirrers and really getting into that super, super deeply.

I was always a keen reader. I jotted down one or two things, but it never occurred to me to think of a job in writing. I thought that writers were like demi-gods. I don't know what I thought.

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found out the truth . I learnt the truth last November on the third of November, to be precise and I remember every instant since.

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

People say, 'When did you decide you were gay?' and you think, 'When did you decide you were heterosexual?' It's not a decision: it's something you gradually begin to realise about yourself.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see

I think of myself as still being about five. Maybe that's why my Twitter picture is of me at five. That's how I feel. I'm honored if I can inspire somebody else. I'm just still trying to figure it all out about myself.

My sincere hope is that 'The Da Vinci Code,' in addition to entertaining people, will serve as an open door to begin their own explorations.

Not long before my mother died, I found a long-lost portrait of Jane Franklin's granddaughter, Jane Flagg, aged nine - oil on canvas - in the basement of a public library not a dozen miles from my mother's house.

I never thought I was a libertarian until I picked up Reason magazine and realized I agree with everything they had printed.

Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too - the terms with which they are connected to other people.

I knew that I was different when I was six years old, but it wasn't until I got to about 10 or 11 that I realised I was a gay man.

I thought I pretty much knew Johnny Cash's life. But one of my personal discoveries was how little we know about any of these people.

When I first was exposed to Buddhism in the mid-1960s, I said it was so practical and utterly pragmatic. That's what attracted me to Buddhism.

One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.

Once I tried to find myself as a musician and a composer, I went back and saw that there was something special about Puerto Rican music. I knew that before, but had never sat down and thought about it. The more I learned about it, the more it found its way into the music I was writing.

Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

I just found out last week - my sister told me - that my father had some Beatles records. So I must have heard them quite a bit, but it never registered, really. Now I listen to them with new ears.

When I was 13, I entered the seminary in the hope of becoming a priest. But I often found myself helping the nuns in the kitchen and thus discovered my passion for cooking. I began to cultivate my skills and aspirations at the age of 15, when I embarked on my first apprenticeship.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others

I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. But then a lady at the youth theatre asked me if I'd ever thought of going to drama school.

My real musical discovery started when I was 10 with Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5, and acts that I connected with because they were young when they were doing it, like me. Then I kind of came into my own a couple of years later; I found new artists that shaped my musical landscape. For instance, Kings of Leon played a big part in that.