Reinventing Oneself Quotes

One of the beauties about going solo was being able to start from scratch and say, 'What do I really want? What kind of band do I really want? What kind of live show do I really want to stage?' Without any of the baggage of being something with history.

It was never too late to undo who you had become.

I look at my career and I feel I have the potential to maybe mature into a Samuel Jackson-type older cat, and people will still respect me and say 'Yo, Ice-T was wild', into my old age. And why not? I don't necessarily think I'll be rapping in 10 years.

I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself.

and if anybody asks me is it easy to forget I'll say it is easily done, you just pick anyone, and pretend that you never have met

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!

There's two ways of dealing with fears of mortality. One of them is to hide, so every day you wear the same suit and go to the same job... and the other is to reinvent yourself. I think I reinvent myself all the time. The idea that I would have to be one thing for the rest of my life would just be a soul-destroying idea.

When the going gets tough, the tough reinvent.

You can't make a life over. Society wouldn't let you if you would.

One cannot start a new life, you can only continue the old one.

No matter how much you screw up your own life by the wrong decisions that you make, it's never too late to do the right thing and change your ways and you can teach old dogs new tricks.

I would love to break away from my comic image.

I love acting because it's a bit of an escape. It gives you the ability to reinvent yourself. They say that acting is the shy man's revenge.

I didn't want to be a former child actor for the rest of my life, although in some ways I suppose I am. I am going to be that.

In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.

Fearlessness is the mother of reinvention.

And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and three husbands.

How can we resent the life we've created for ourselves?

I’m not young anymore. I don’t wanna start over again.

I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.

I just want to not be me.

For 15 years, I've been playing the same character - which is myself - and I'm bored with 'myself'.

I used to be called Waddy Jones. But I changed my name to Ninja because it's more me.

I wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible.

I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.