Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

People want to know more about me. They want to know who I am.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that's always existed.

I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit.

I don't find myself intriguing.

I don't relate to what is seen as 'Arab culture.' I relate to what I explore myself, what is around me.

I love talking about anything, except for myself.

There are a lot of layers to me.

Me, what's that after all? An arbitrary limitation of being bounded by the people before and after and on either side. Where they leave off I begin, and vice versa.

All good work requires self-revelation.

I have a hard time isolating what it is in myself that makes me so fascinated with the theme of identity, because I came from a normal upper middle-class family. And yet, as I look back at my books, the uses of power, issues of identity, they have - it's recurrent. It happens again and again.

When I take a role I wonder how I can use it to find out who I really am. I don't think I'm so rare a person.

Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you - MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am.

I think I'm a pretty right down the middle guy. I just think that's kind of who I am. I'm not afraid of my own journey.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

To find out who you are is like putting yourself on a psychiatric couch, but you have nobody to help you. Really it isn't easy. I was talking with my nephew this morning and he gave me one of the best quotes I've heard in years 'Personal style is curiosity about oneself.'

The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself'as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.

Whatever encourages people to become more interested in who they are and discovering who they are, as opposed to just accepting what people or things are saying what they are. That's fascinating to me.

To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.