A Quote by Stephen Dunn
I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.
Related Quotes
Acting allows me to explore new worlds, to discover characters by delving into their lives, and ultimately to become someone else entirely.
The point of life that I'm currently at is a 'me right now' type of attitude. I am 37 years-old, my son is in college and my daughter is in high school. I'm becoming okay with me. I can't live life as an artist or person being someone that someone else has tried to mold me into. I'm not going to put on a dress that's two sizes too small. I'm custom making my own clothes so that they'll never fit anyone else if you know what I mean.
I tried many, many times to run away while my little brother was asleep. But at those moments, I always ended up thinking this-- My brother has only me in this world. Vince wants only me and needs only me. However... when he is gone, will there really be anyone else who needs me? When I thought about that, it scared me. It truly scared me. Cowardly, I could do nothing but hold my brother's tiny body while hiding my ugly emotions.
Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.
It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!
I'll wear little dresses for a look and then it'll become only shorts for a while or only t-shirts for a while. So I go through different phases but I combine different things. I don't like things that draw too much attention. It's usually just things that complement me and aren't too loud.
With acting, you have to become someone else. That's the fun part of it for me - to step outside of yourself and become a character. I guess being Jimmy Cliff is a little bit of a character, too.
The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique.
I should not have to flirt with someone while I'm trying to threaten someone else with a gun; it was too hard to do both.
Some of songs are autobiographical and some of it is more telling a story from someone else's perspective. It's healthy for me to do that because, oftentimes, it can become too narcissistic if I'm trying to express myself all of the time. My problems are what I'm going through and sometimes it's nice to take a step back and feel what someone else is going through and that can help.
If you don't like something, talk about something else that's great and maybe someone else will discover it and think it's great too.
If you are required to kill someone today, on the promise of a political leader that someone else shall live in peace tomorrow, believe me, you are not only a double murderer, you are a suicide, too.
If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.
But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it. And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.
My parents - they tried to become American, they tried to become British, they tried to become Scandinavian - nobody wanted them, anywhere.
The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.
Related Authors
Alexander Pope Quotes
English
Poet
Emily Dickinson Quotes
American
Poet
George Herbert Quotes
British
Poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
American
Poet
Homer Quotes
Greek
Poet
Horace Quotes
Roman
Poet
John Milton Quotes
English
Poet
Khalil Gibran Quotes
Lebanese
Poet
Lord Byron Quotes
British
Poet
Maya Angelou Quotes
American
Poet
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Irish
Poet
Ovid Quotes
Roman
Poet
T. S. Eliot Quotes
American
Poet
Walt Whitman Quotes
American
Poet
William Butler Yeats Quotes
Irish
Poet