“I use bits and pieces of others personalities to form my own.”
“How often, you wonder, has the direction of your life been shaped by such misunderstandings? How many opportunities have you been denied--or, for that matter, awarded--because someone failed to see you properly? How many friends have you lost, how many have you gained, because they glimpsed some element of your personality that shone through for only an instant, and in circumstances you could never reproduce? An illusion of water shimmering at the far bend of a highway.”
“I never could bear the idea of anyone s expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.”
“I m THAT complicated, mysterious, yet content with the simple things in life. Don t try to understand me; you won t figure me out. But you re free to like me the way I am.”
“There s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.”
“I wish people weren t so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.”
“In the beginning, some people try to appear that everything about them is in black and white, until later their true colors come out.”
“Stop thinking all the time that you re in the way, that you re bothering the person next to you. If people don t like it, they can complain. And if they don t have courage to complain, that s their problem.”
“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registered earthquakes ten thousand miles away.”
“Oh, Wax has always been solemn, but when he s at his best, there s a smirk underneath.”
“I m told I m very charming when people do what I want.”
“At once, it’s clear I cannot gush. We try me playing cocky, but I just don’t have the arrogance. Apparently, I’m too “vulnerable” for ferocity. I’m not witty. Funny. Sexy. Or mysterious By the end of the session, I am no one at all.”
“If there is a true measure of a person s soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes. The Dalai Lama s eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope s eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson s eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don t use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else s.”
“My Personality unfolding before you like a Swiss Army knife.”
“Does it help if we re so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what? asked Wang-mu. I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes, said Peter. Then let s do it. That s us in spades.”
“Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think you d find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble.”
“Every human personality is the product of an innate drive to create something unique from one’s raw individual experience.”