self-reflection quotes

Sometimes, I feel like one who is on the sidelines, who has missed life itself.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

I’m sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

I was a thug.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

The people in my songs are all me.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

I think and that is all that I am.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

I’m not good at talking about myself.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

I really have no interest in myself.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

I’ve been careful in love. I’ve been careless in love. And I’ve had adventures I wouldn’t trade for anything.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Vanity is but the surface.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking lately about how boring I am. When I do get time to myself, I watch TV.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.