Myself First Quotes

#1. The first profile piece on myself came about after my Rabbi sent information to the Jewish Chronicle on what I was up to. The story was then picked up by one of the nationals and things grew from there.

Benjamin Cohen

#2. I wouldn't consider myself a Buddhist or a card-carrying zealot at all. My first commitment is as a scientist to uncover the truth about all this.

Richard Davidson

#3. It was made clear to me that Music is related to everything, especially nature and language, but in order to speak it naturally, I had to first make myself a part of it.

Victor L. Wooten

#4. I went to do my first big movie when I was 17. I was in South Africa for three and half months, and I was by myself.

Robert Pattinson

#5. Without music I wouldn't have the ability to be in business. The opportunity to be in business came with the finances from music and the notoriety that comes with being successful as an artist. So I see myself as an artist first, but I'm absolutely conscious of business.

Curtis Jackson

#6. Success has a lot of different plateaus. But I first felt really proud of myself when I was doing an off-Broadway production in New York City.

Chris Carmack

#7. One professor in college told me flat out I wasn't good enough to enter the creative writing program. I saved that letter and promised myself I would send it back to her when my first book came out.

Ellen Potter

#8. I will never again permit myself to forget that isolation is the first step to defeat.

Karen Marie Moning

#9. I'm the type of person who feels I have to prove myself first.

Renee O'Connor

#10. All my life, in nameless, indeterminate ways, I'd tried to complete my life with someone else
first my father, then Hugh, even Whit, and I didn't want that anymore. I wanted to belong to myself.

Sue Monk Kidd

#11. When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'

Bob Newhart

#12. Nobody ought to be too old to improve: I should be sorry if I was; and I flatter myself I have already improved considerably by my travels. First, I can swallow gruel soup, egg soup, and all manner of soups, without making faces much. Secondly, I can pretty well live without tea ...

Anna Letitia Barbauld

#13. I make films for myself, first and foremost, just because it is such a personal experience, and it's something I really have to want to do and feel connected to.

Cameron Diaz

#14. The first time I took a fiction writing class was sophomore year. And I just found myself taking that extremely seriously, in a way that I didn't take anything else seriously. So I guess that was the start of it.

John Brandon

#15. It wasn't until I became more confident with myself and I put myself forward instead of the jokes; at first it was put the jokes out there and I'm just behind the jokes.

Wanda Sykes

#16. The first time I ever did a play, in junior high school, I said to myself, 'Hey, people like me doing this. I'm making them laugh.'

Stephen Furst

#17. I told myself that once I was done ripping the seagull's head off, I would turn around and give a speech so saccharine that even Eddie wouldn't be able to console them when I was finished. I would destroy them, and they would drown in an ocean of their tears.
But first the seagull.

T.J. Klune

#18. It seems to me that my whole life I've been standing on some tower or a pillbox or a trampoline, waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. And the first person I had to rescue was myself.

John Leonard

#19. At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I'll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

Kendrick Lamar

#20. I can't kill myself, I thought. I'm too insignificant. I'm nothing. I'm a thumbprint on the first-floor window of a skyscraper, a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea along with millions of tons of raw sewage, a squirrel eating a nut as a car bore down on him.

Rex Pickett

#21. Well, I never got into the young adult headspace. With 'Twilight,' they are pretty adult themes, aside from maybe the first one, but even that. They're very adult themes, actually, particularly as the characters age. I never wrote for young adults. I wrote for myself, as an audience.

Melissa Rosenberg

#22. Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.

Joyce Carol Oates

#23. There are three reasons why this book came into being. First, throughout the 33 years I've been writing recipes - although I'm not vegetarian myself - I have greatly enjoyed creating vegetarian recipes, and cooking and serving them at home.

Delia Smith

#24. Every day I try to tell myself that this is going to be fun today. I try to put myself in a great frame of mind before I go out - then I screw it up with the first shot.

Johnny Miller

#25. I definitely think of myself as a musician first.

Lucia Micarelli

#26. For the first time in my life, I'm proud of myself.

Mary J. Blige

#27. On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me to show her one, last, good time. I doubted I was up to the task, but regardless, I entered from the rear, just to give myself the slightest mental edge.

Chip Kidd

#28. Pretty soon, I'll be decomposing into phosphorous, calcium, and so on. Who else will you find to tell you the truth? All that's left are the archives. Pieces of paper. And the truth is... I worked at an archive myself, I can tell you first hand: paper lies even more than people do.

Svetlana Alexievich

#29. Well, the first two days in prison, I had to go through what life is like when you've been smoking weed for as long as I have and then you stop. Emotionally, it was like I didn't know myself.

Tupac Shakur

#30. I'm the worst critic about music myself. I hardly ever, every like something the first time I listen to it. So I've got to put myself in other people's shoes.

Marc Martel

#31. A psychiatrist once asked me to draw a picture of my family. This is when I was a member of a family of four. I drew the three other people in the family first, bodies and heads. And then, last, I began to draw myself - but gave up.

Jamaica Kincaid

#32. Stand-up will always be my first love, and it has been the primary way I've expressed myself since I was 17.

Hari Kondabolu

#33. The first time I went to Johnny Depp's house in LA is when I realized what I was getting myself into. I knew he was famous, but I didn't really know what that entailed.

Kate Moss

#34. When I first came up to the majors and I'd have a bad day, I'd punish myself. I would do something like not eat dinner. Now I've come to appreciate that we play 162 games a year, and you're going to have bad days. And not eating dinner hurts, it doesn't help.

Todd Helton

#35. I never realized that grief and self-pity weren't the same thing. I thought grieving was what I was doing all this time I had been feeling sorry for myself, but it wasn't. So for the first time in nearly three years, I let myself grieve.

Katja Millay

#36. I'm a father myself for the first time in my life, and I had very very loving parents.

David Keith

#37. The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#38. It was with deep interest that my companion and myself, both now about to see and examine the beauties of a tropical country for the first time, gazed on the land where I, at least, eventually spent eleven of the best years of my life.

Henry Walter Bates

#39. My very, very first moment on set on 'Lord of the Rings' in 2000 was me in a lycra suit, six and a half thousand feet up on a mountain in New Zealand, standing in front of 250 crew who were all wondering what I was doing - myself included.

Andy Serkis

#40. Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.

Paul Simon

#41. Comics is still my first love. But I always did other kinds of writing, too, so I think of myself as a writer first.

Warren Ellis

#42. One day at my grandmother's house, I discovered 'The Secret Garden' and read it. This was the first book I found entirely for myself, and I cherished it.

Cynthia Voigt

#43. I think of myself first as a singer, meaning an interpreter. Then I think of myself as a writer. It is an outlet I have to have. I get very hard to live with without something happening to write about.

Oliver

#44. People talk about games and loneliness - it's a lonely activity. I didn't understand that. 'Gears of War' was the first multiplayer game for me that I enjoyed. But I wasn't sad. I liked being alone. I liked playing games by myself. I had lots of companionship at the house.

Tim Schafer

#45. My first sense of myself was as an artist, a painter. I would see a Van Gogh painting and just love it, the more emotional and passionate the more it attracted me.

Philip Schultz

#46. I loved Aphrodite from the first and steeped myself in her legends. My mother told me that in ancient times her rituals were bloody and cruel, but I only half believed it.

Erica Jong

#47. I wrote my first novel in the same conditions as most first novelists - I had a full-time job, I shared an apartment, I had no time - and so I became a compulsive outliner of everything. Ever since then, my process has consisted of trying to forcibly rid myself of that compulsion.

Jonathan Dee

#48. It was never a conscious decision - I was introducing myself as Duffy and my friends were calling me Duffy, so I just knocked off the first half of my name. For me it's no big deal, but a lot of people want to unearth why I've called myself this. It's just what I'm known as, you know.

Duffy

#49. For my first pretty big international competition and the Olympics, I think I did pretty well. Medals aren't everything. It's all about you going out there and having a good time. I feel proud of myself.

Kimmie Meissner

#50. I used to think to myself that I was the last kind of person who should have a guardian angel, but then I realized that maybe my type of person is the kind who angels come to first.

Rebecca McNutt

#51. I feel like I always describe myself as a late bloomer. My first album, in my mind, was that I had a few songs I needed to take from incomplete demos to working with someone else and finishing them.

Albert Hammond Jr.

#52. There are two reasons why I propose to make myself thoroughly and unashamedly happy by talking about myself. The first is that on several occasions, both in England and America, I have been told that I am a legendary character.

Louis J. Mordell

#53. There was something strange in my sensations, indescribably new and incredibly sweet. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be tenfold more wicked and the thought delighted me like wine.

Robert Louis Stevenson

#54. I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don't have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don't want to do it. What a liberating word.

Bel Kaufman

#55. I wasn't in a position to defend myself. Sometimes it's a brutal profession. The first thing I thought of at the time was revenge. I have a more levelheaded take on the issue today.

Patrik Sinkewitz

#56. I treated myself to a £700 Chloe bag after one of my first acting jobs. Then my friends pointed out that, for the same money, I could buy a flight to India. So I took it back.

Lily James

#57. I didn't even realize it was a grand slam (number thirty-one) because I was mentally preparing myself for Andy Benes because he struck me out the first time.

Mark McGwire

#58. My true place in the world, it turned out, was somewhere beyond myself, and if that place was inside me, it was also unlocatable. This was the tiny hole between self and not-self, and for the first time in my life I saw this nowhere as the exact center of the world.

Paul Auster

#59. The first thing I ever bought for myself was a green Lacoste shirt.

Mary-Louise Parker

#60. At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

Chris Van Allsburg

#61. When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!

Roberto Benigni

#62. The author of what I describe is not myself, it is the Other. First of all it is you, it is the woman, it is the queen, it is the Child, it is a person who is greater than I and who surpasses you as well, whom you do not know. I am your scribe.

Helene Cixous

#63. I don't think of myself as being particulary a subversive writer, but I like to think that my work could afford someone else, the extra degree of freedom that I found when I first found science fiction.

William Gibson

#64. How would you create a fortune?' and the first step would be to serve others. I would put myself in a position, by serving others, to be around people who could help me, guide me, and share their wisdom and experience with me.

Andy Andrews

#65. The only pressure comes form myself. I put pressure on myself at first just because I was intimidated. When I made Amy Poehler laugh, it was a big thing for me. She's been one of my role models since high school, because she started UCB, which is what I wanted to do since high school.

Aubrey Plaza

#66. 'Marvin Gaye' came about my first day in L.A. It was kind of crazy that that's my first song that I wrote and it blew up that much. What's crazy is the next day I wrote 'See You Again,' so that's pretty interesting. I was trying to prove myself as a songwriter.

Charlie Puth

#67. Coming out of the Louvre for the first time in 1971, dizzy with new love, I stood on Pont Neuf and made a pledge to myself that the art of this newly discovered world in the Old World would be my life companion.

Susan Vreeland

#68. Look, if I don't flirt with you, you should take that as a compliment. I don't always respect myself, but I almost never respect men. They're like flowers all showy, a lot of color and lust. You pick them and throw them on the ground. But you I respect. I always did. From the first day I saw you.

Barbara Kingsolver

#69. My strength is basically my get off. It is overpowering. I can get after the quarterback on first, second and third down. I pride myself on being an every down guy.

Darius Philon

#70. When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter?

Trent Reznor

#71. I think I'd been limiting myself in some ways just writing in first person all the time.

Adam Duritz

#72. Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.

Thomas Merton

#73. When I first see the dailies, I look only at myself, but then you start to see the scene.

Catherine Deneuve

#74. When you first get money, you buy all these things so no one thinks you're mean, and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think, I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!

Paul McCartney

#75. I am suspicious - first of all, in myself - of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people's tendency to ... vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other 'exotic' ways of understanding.

Adrienne Rich

#76. Choice
I needed it like I needed air.
Bit no one could hear me.
No one could listen.
No words. No sound.
No voice.
I couldn't even dream myself away.
Choices were made.
None of them mine.
At first I wondered if it was hell.
And then I knew it was.

Mary E. Pearson

#77. I have little patience with anyone who is not self-satisfied. I am always pleased to see my friends, happy to be with my wife and family, but the high spot of every day is when I first catch a glimpse of myself in the shaving mirror.

Robert Morley

#78. I have tried to put myself in the position of someone seeing economics for the first time. My goal is to emphasize the material that students should and do find interesting about the study of the economy.

Greg Mankiw

#79. I believe my first duty is to survive. And I'm not just talking about criminals coming into my home. I once seriously considered getting a gun to protect myself from the police. If I need a weapon to continue living, I'll get one. And I'll use it.

George Carlin

#80. I have never lived on principles. When I have had to act, I never first asked myself on what principles I was going to act, but I went at it and did what I thought fit. I have often reproached myself for my want of principle.

Otto Von Bismarck

#81. I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Henry Kissinger

#82. I grew up when I was 15 when I had my first opportunity in movies. I watched every great movie for a year and a half, and since then I've asked myself how I can emulate such artistry. That's really my motivation. I want to do something as good as my heroes have done.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#83. I wait until her breathing is soft and even against me before I let myself drift off to sleep, like I've been doing every night for the past few weeks. Slowly, everything in my life is turning into putting her first, and I'm not going to fight it.

Carian Cole

#84. I consider myself British and have very happy memories of the UK. I spent the first 14 years of my life in England and never wanted to leave. When I was in Australia I went back to England a lot.

Naomi Watts

#85. In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

Salman Rushdie

#86. I think I was about twenty-five when I first said - more or less to myself - that I was quite a good second-rate poet. I repeated it aloud in a Guardian interview in 1976, and some people thought I was a coy old thing.

John Pudney

#87. My husband's a little younger than me. When I first started dating him, I just fell mad for him. I made a deal with myself: I was like, 'I'm not gonna get weird about what the future might be. I'm just going to be in every moment I can and enjoy us to the fullest.' I told him that, too.

Joelle Carter

#88. While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.

John Green

#89. I like to style myself, as my first job out of university was working at 'Vogue' magazine in NYC, and I grew up attending the collections with my mother, so I have a particular aesthetic, which is classic glamour with a twist.

Carly Steel

#90. If there ever is government-run health care, the first ones to sign up should be the president and every member of Congress, including myself. You should be able to keep the insurance you've got today, if you like it, and always choose your own doctor.

Mike Ross

#91. I want to establish myself as the first Eric Davis, not the next Willie Mays.

Eric Davis

#92. As a child I trained myself to dance in very high heels. At 13, in Destiny's Child, we were told to wear heels, but at first we couldn't walk in them. We couldn't keep our knees straight, but we learned.

Beyonce Knowles

#93. You are not the last dream of my soul.
You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime's worth.

Cassandra Clare

#94. I grew up definitely a feminist, but I didn't call myself a feminist until I took my first women's studies class in college.

Jessica Valenti

#95. All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the personages. In fact, I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person singular.

Pedro Almodovar

#96. My daughter loves to cook. At first, I found myself making her be really neat and precise. Then I realized it's OK if things get all over the floor and counters and ceiling. We're making memories.

Kimberly Schlapman

#97. I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.

Terry Pratchett

#98. As soon as he was gone I blew my breath out and leaned back against the wall. Awkward. First the cop who'd arrested me, then the paramedic who'd kept me from accidentally killing myself. I didn't even want to think what a third thing might be.

Diana Rowland

#99. My folks didn't name me. I was hours old when they wrote options on a whole bunch of Post-its, covered my body with them and waited for me to name myself. I touched Scott first and they went with that.

Will Kostakis

#100. I love that first-time feeling that I can't build in myself anymore, where I can learn and emulate other filmmakers. Be it Ayan Mukherjee, Punit Mahotra, Karan Malhotra, Tarun Mansukhani or Shakun Batra, all of them have taught me something or the other.

Karan Johar