Mark Mothersbaugh Quotes

Sometimes I wake up and think, 'How did I get here?'

I had no idea who I was when I started. I was frightened to death and had no natural performing skills.

you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four.

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid.

I was kind of confused. I thought, Well, if I get drafted, I'll go. Everybody was very concerned with it. I had friends who went. Some that came back and some that didn't.

Not sure of my place in the world (still up for debate) and not sure what I wanted to do with my life (not really up for debate).

I was terrified of the Vietnam War when I was 13. I thought I was going. The draft was such an ominous thing, I felt as if it was going to trickle down to me.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

I have no idea what I'm doin'. I've never seen me.

I spent the first 25 years of my life not knowing what I wanted to do.

I had always wanted to belong, and I had been thinking that this was going to get solved when I had money, and instead, I had no idea how I wanted to live my life. And no one teaches you what to do after you achieve financial independence. So I had to confront that.

I don't know what I would have done to rebel. I don't know what I was rebelling against.

I spent a lot of time flailing around, not really sure what I wanted to do, in my 20s and early 30s.

At 26, I barely knew who I was.

You don't know who you are when you're 14.

I look at old pictures of me... and I don't feel like I'm that guy anymore, but then I look at pictures of me now, and I'm not quite sure I'm this guy.

I write from the perspective of an early 20s kid who is trying to grasp an idea of what the hell is going on.

Oh my god what am I doing with my life?

Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself.

If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.

The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.

If I can't do that at age 33, I'll probably never be able to do it. As you enter your thirties, things get a little more squiggly, with life spreading out in different directions. All of that makes me think that now's the time to do what you really want to do and not have that same type of youthful anxiety about every step.

…balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.

I actually didn't enjoy being a child particularly at all even though I had nice parents in a comfortable place to live. Just because I was too confused in generating too many answers for myself that just scared me more.

The best advice I've ever received is, 'No one else knows what they're doing either.