Norman Maclean Quotes

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

I'm really interested in stories about identity - who I am now versus who I used to be.

Our lives teach us who we are.

I'm reminded of who I am, who I was, and who I'm supposed to be.

What do you know about yourself? What are your stories? The ones you tell yourself, and the ones told by others. All of us begin somewhere. Though I suppose the truth is that we begin more than once; we begin many times. Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.'

Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

I have to live in the truth that this is who I am. That's what I need to focus on.

I'm on this search trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I have to say to people.

The real rub is finding that authentic self and it's not something that's going to come to you overnight.

I have always felt that I am the sum total of my parts.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.

It's a beautiful thing at 60 to know who you are.

I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.

We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves.

It is not the question, what am I going to be when I grow up; you should ask the question, who am I going to be when I grow up.

Everything I have experienced in my life helps form who I am today, and I would not change or forget any of it.

I developed a sense of self before moving to crazy Hollywood, which was really important.