Ilka Chase Quotes

The word 'self' is as great a mystery as the word 'other'. It's just a polarity between two mysteries.

If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.

I can explain my body and my brain, but there's something more. I can't explain my own existence - what makes me a unique human being.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

What is an "I", and why are such things found (at least so far) only in association with, as poet Russell Edson once wonderfully phrased it, "teetering bulbs of dread and dream" - that is, only in association with certain kinds of gooey lumps encased in hard protective shells mounted atop mobile pedestals that roam the world on pairs of slightly fuzzy, jointed stilts?

A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation.

That I am not my experiences is very obvious. I am the one who is having those experiences. Spirituality has nothing to do with experience.

Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime and in his old age, man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

Also, where does your identity come from? Your memory, of course.

We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.

An 'I' without a body is a possibility. But a body without an 'I' is utterly impossible.

I have a body, but I am not my body. I have a face, but I am not my face.

There's nothing particularly unique about my experiences except that they're my experiences.

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.

Everyone has their own different life experiences which make them who they are. No two people's life experiences are the same. And mine are just unique to me.

All I know is that when I go somewhere, I'm not an autobot. I am a human being. I am not an actor.

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves.

I am so enriched because so much has happened in my life. The way I can express myself is because of the life I have led. It's only when you experience life can you emote it.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

I've always been very conscious of who I am.

I am not fundamentally a musician, I am fundamentally a human being.

I am who I am: I have my life experiences and my professional experiences.

There is no self.

Being born was the most influential thing that's ever happened to me, for myself.