A Quote by Katherine Mansfield

What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.
But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.
I am an expert in the world of the supremely happy because I am happy. I've never met anybody as happy as I am - that, in itself, should make you unhappy.
Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.
When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.
When I am happy I am like a cat, sleek and purring, quite useless. It is when I am unhappy, with an ache perhaps in my heart, that I do my finest work.
If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?
It does not in the least concern me whether I shall have at the end of my life thirty people who understand or three hundred. I am like an artist who paints a picture because he must, otherwise he is unhappy - not unhappy, but he must obey that creative impulse.
The central attitudes driving the Demand Man are: It's your job to do things for me, including taking care of my responsibilities if I drop the ball on them. If I'm unhappy about any aspect of my life, whether it has to do with our relationship or not, it's your fault. You should not place demands on me at all. You should be grateful for whatever I choose to give. I am above criticism. I am a very loving and giving partner. You're lucky to have me.
I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic. I am not generous. I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel—everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire.
I am not unhappy that my contribution was not recognized. I am sure it helped my career.
I'm always looking at the next thing. I'm too curious to look back...it's very hard to be unhappy when you're curious and grateful. You're busy. You don't have time to be unhappy. My biggest talent is I know who is more talented than I am. I find them and I go to them, and I learn.
I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.
I know that they're all unhappy because nobody loves the right person the way they should and because they don't understand that it's really their own self that they're mad at.
I am ignorant and impotent and yet, somehow or other, here I am, unhappy, no doubt, profoundly dissatisfied ... In spite of everything I survive.
I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.
I had identified discipline as a really important part of my life, in maintaining my sanity. It's kind of interesting when people don't know me and then get to know me and see just how workaholic I am and how unhappy I am when I don't have something to work on, or if I am not provided with the tools to be able to accomplish those things, like touring without my looping rig or without a piano, I'm just kind of like, 'Aahhh, what do I do with my day?' To me, that's just a large part of my sanity.
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