Robert Harris Quotes

Sometimes I think that people's characters get forged, at least in part, from their names.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Identity issues are hardwired into the way I think about character - it's almost as if I can't get away from them even if I want to.

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

I am whatever you make me, nothing more.

Human beings absolutely follow through on who they believe they are

What ends up happening is people form images and the image they form is, in some ways, what they want it to be. The idea of trying to correct the image is something I'm not interested in doing.

It's impossible to consistently behave in a manner inconsistent with how we see ourselves. We can do very few things in a positive way if we feel negative about ourselves.

names are a way to keep people in your mind

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be

I have this identity for myself as a writer and the only thing that can happen is that I chip away from it.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

What we do comes out of who we believe we are.

It turns out that our notions of what a 'self' is and how it might feel fulfilled have no more objective status than most of the rest of reality. It seems we make ourselves up as we go along.

You don't have to agree with me, but I think the heart of who we are stays pretty much the same," Hope said, "What changes is how those core traits manifest themselves over time.

I think in the whole field of questions about what we take to be "real," one of those questions is about the self. When you talk about the self we're always talking about whether it's a construction and it's a construction we're always in the process of working on. I don't think that work ever ends, to some degree.

Brands communicate in two directions: they help us tell other people something about ourselves, but they also help us form ideas about who we are.

I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

You become that which you think you are. Or, it is not that you become it, but that the idea gets very deeply rooted and that's what all conditioning is.

The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves makes us who we are.

What we know about who we are comes from stories. It's the agents of our imagination who really shape who we are.

You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

Whatever role we were in our family of birth, we take on this persona and in your 20s and 30s in particular, you end up thinking that's you and that isn't necessarily you.

I changed my name because it didn't fit with the way I saw myself.