306 Quotes About Self-image

Sara and I both have this very self-deprecating, almost abusive way of looking at ourselves. We both feel like we can be very destructive and very pessimistic and very tortured and very weak, but in a weird way those are some of our best qualities.

There was a time he’d heard tales of Dab Sweet and he’d stuck thumbs in his belt and chin to the sky and tricked himself that was how his life had been. But the years scraped by hard as ever and he got less and the stories more ’til they were tales of a man he’d never met succeeding at what he’d never have dreamed of attempting.

I consider myself a Nordic author. But I do not know exactly what that is. I think it has something to do with time, landscapes, weather and language: a slow melancholic attitude, interrupted by dramatic emotions, like a stone in water.

Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.

Personal history is the self-image a man has acquired because of his view of the world - an image which he projects into the world around him.

Nobody's story is real unless we share it with someone who matters.

No one is responsible for your emotional reactions except you. Others can say and do anything they like but what happens inside you is only the result of what you are thinking and feeling.

You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad.

Most importantly, of course, we all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.