Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

Terence Trent D'Arby was dead. He watched his suffering as he died a noble death. After intense pain I meditated for a new spirit, a new will, a new identity.

My characters who come back from death are worse for wear. In some ways, they're not even the same characters anymore. The body may be moving, but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed, and they've lost something.

In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge.

Things that I had created or morphed into, I almost became. I felt like a broken man having to go back to plain old Matt Hardy in many ways.

'Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon. I've always been obsessed with the idea of disappearing and becoming someone else. Even if you don't share that obsession, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.

It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new. That of course was before I disappeared.

Life's major challenge: getting reborn often enough.

I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West.

Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me. Re-create me. Won't you, won't you won't you re-create me.

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face. My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness. I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.

I once was the walrus, now I'm John.

There's a reason why she left them, Lauren," he says. His voice is deep, and it rumbles. "What's your name?" "Um..." I don't know why I hesitate. But "Beatrice" just doesn't sound right anymore. "Think about it," he says, a faint smile curling his lips. " You don't get to pick again." A new place, a new name. I can be remade here. "Tris," I say firmly.

i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.

The life I was leading was changing me into someone I didn't even know.

Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.

and because what we learn in the dark remains all our lives, a noise like the sea, displacing the day's pale knowledge, you'll come to yourself in a glimmer of rainfall or frost, the burnt smell of autumn, a meeting of parallel lines, and know you were someone else for the longest time, pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist, lost on the one main square, and afraid to enquire.

The Christian's God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: 'tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.

I hated motorcycles. I said to my mother, 'I'll never get a motorcycle.' And she said, 'You never know what you'll want when you are older.' After that, the thing that scared me was not so much the motorcycle itself, but that I could turn into a person who would want one. I was scared of the idea that I could become an entirely different person, a stranger to myself.

you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

You have to have the ability to remake yourself. Whatever that is. Every several years... Every five to 10 years.

Birth into this life was the death of the embryo life that preceded; and the death of this will be birth into some new mode of being.

By daily dying, I have come to be.