#self-image

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

"Mirrors are perpetually deceitful. They lie and steal your true self. They reveal only what your mind believes it sees"

"To ugly ducklings everywhere,Don't worry about those fluffy yellow morons:They'll never get to be swans"

"You are the only you God made... God made you and broke the mold."

"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."

"It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!"

"It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me."

"Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being. (109)"

"Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."