I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.

I want to be judged by who I am as a person, not by what happened to me. In fact, all the bad things have only contributed to my confidence and sense of self, because...

I think what’s most interesting about me is the work that I do.

The self-esteem of western women is founded on physical being (body mass index, youth, beauty). This creates a tricky emphasis on image, but the internalized locus of self-worth saves lives. Western men are very different....

It doesn’t really matter how you feel about your character, it just matters what you do with it.

What you’re doing is putting into professional play the way that you relate to other people, the way that you analyze and relate to a written text, the way that you would persuade anybody to...

A person who speaks his own words makes the true sense to the world and, therefore, the real difference in the lives of the people to whom he speaks directly or indirectly.

They didn’t realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn’t sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.

Figure out who you are separate from your family, and the man or woman you’re in a relationship with. Find who you are in this world and what you need to feel good alone. I...

I had the strangest feeling — like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place — that I wasn’t what I once was, and wasn’t at all what I was...

It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things...

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

He has never told anyone this story. He doesn’t mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past–within reason–but he doesn’t mean to give away pieces of himself.

Newsflash she already has body image issues. It’s an intrinsic part of being a woman. Every woman in the world has some part of herself that she absolutely hates. Her hands are too small, her feet are...

It’s not about what people think. It’s about who you are.

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one’s self, to attune to one’s subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience....

Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.

My sense of self has expanded and contracted like a schizophrenic accordion. I have questioned everything, and I have felt nothing. I have told the universe to f**k off, and I have fallen down weeping...

Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was,...

To give value to others, you have to begin by valuing yourself.

For in some ways the world was like a shopping centre, and he himself was a doubtful customer, often ineffectual, being talked into buying things he didn’t want, things indeed which nobody in their right...

O, wad some Power the giftie gie usTo see oursels as others see us!It wad frae monie a blunder free us,An’ foolish notion.

It’s all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.

The greatest freedom in this world is a sense of self detached from appearances so that we may sacrifice today’s comforts for tomorrow’s opportunities.