Fran Lebowitz Quotes

If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.

I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few became qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to one - to who I am. And that's who I am.

...[She] felt as if she were both a stranger to herself and more herself than she'd ever been.

So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal other.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

You're looking at a different me than I'm looking at.

I have struggled with identity all my life. It's not like something that just happened last week.

Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

I have no idea what my persona would be. As far as I'm concerned, I'm changing all the time.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

What I did for a living for so many years separated who I was from what I did.

I look at that person and I'm like, That's not Kelli White. That's not who I am, who I started out to be.

There's nothing harder than defining oneself.

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.

Identity has been such an explosive territory for me... so hard, so painful at times.

I know for myself, and maybe I'm weird or whatever, but the whole thing is about constantly redefining identity.

I look in the mirror, and what I see is someone who has never grown up - a crashing sentimentalist who alternates between great heights and black depths.

Something really intense happened to me during the 'SNL' performance. It felt like the person I was made to be faced the person I'm becoming. It was the first time I felt like I was able to make any sense of ownership of my work.

As Devin, the person, I'm very different from my artistic self.

The first three years my hair was purple, I still was trying to convince myself that I hated the color purple.