Teju Cole Quotes

Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as these stories concern us at all, we are never less than heroic.

That's the biggest thing to separate - your body from your self worth.

Everybody has their own story - it's who you are. If I wasn't five-foot, I wouldn't be who I am!

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.

I feel it is important not to get overly obsessed and overly carried away with just the physical aspect. There is more to beauty than just the physical appearance. You are also a complete person, and a woman should have an identity beyond just the way she looks.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

A significant number of women who have been ill or had marital issues feel they have no value, and society is so keen on telling us that's the case.

There's always a version of me who is the narrator. And I make myself look better than other people.

I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.

When you become a slave to a public persona and don't feel comfortable without it, it becomes a shield, and it shouldn't come at the expense of your self-worth.

Maybe I am a little bit guilty of trying to convince myself that I am cool to this point - even today. But I am so much more healthy than I used to be in my twenties, because I was not accepted at all.

People tend to look great if they feel great.

If I am not grotesque, I am nothing.

I'm a nut, but not just a nut.

Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.

If you're not happy about how you look, you have to question how much self-love you have.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself - for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

Most of what we say about ourselves is a wonderful piece of storytelling.

I feel like I have a healthy self-esteem.

We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories.

I think everyone self-mythologizes.

The better I feel about my body, the better I feel about my game.

This is one of the reasons I'm so interested in stories. Because everyone has a story in their life, and when their story doesn't make sense, that's when we get depressed, I think.

I don't know if I'm 'normal.'