Ken Kesey Quotes

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.

We [people] love ourselves with conditions. We need opinions, we need approval, we create an image of ourselves that is not what we are. This how we lose our authenticity and create masks - how we become "domesticated."

I'm just an advertisement for a version of myself.

Don't get confused with what people say you are, with who you know you are.

When you try to talk about yourself, you dont know who you are, or what your like, or what your like to other people. And the moment you do it's a formula for yourself, and then you're imitating yourself, and then nobody likes you and they dont know why.

I don't really see myself that way, as some typical sexy young ingénue. I've never been that way. And, for a while, there was a disconnect between who I am and how I present myself on a public platform. That was because I didn't necessarily feel comfortable sharing that much of myself with other people who I didn't know.

We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.

Ultimately, it's not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people's expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.

Whether at work, at home or in public, we have been trained to believe that who we are at the core of our being is often unacceptable. As a result, we work diligently to live up to - and sometimes down to - what others have made us out to be, whether or not it is an accurate reflection of who we are.

What doesn't feel okay to me, what feels a little bit out of balance, is when you want to turn yourself into something else - when you want to be another person.

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.

I could easily not be the person that people know.

I never really did abandon my true self. It's not like I invented this imaginary person and started to be her.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

If I put on a tie and play what I really think I am, I'm a disaster.

I'm really not about changing my image.

Everybody is in a hurry to decode you in a certain way, and then they expect you to adhere to their definition. How can they possibly do that when you yourself are finding it hard to discover yourself?

Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.

Try to figure out who you really are and not who you want other people to think you are.

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?

Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves.