I prefer to put myself in an environment that's further afield and look through the eyes of someone who differs from me in age, ethnicity, gender, and/or social class. I think a little displacement makes me a sharper observer.
Amor Towles
Related I took a psychology class, and I think the study of the mind can help me further my acting ability. ... SIERRA MCCORMICK I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long tim... SALLY FIELD It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes. SALLY FIELD Monotheism makes me grouchy. I don't trust any religion that makes God look like one of the ruli... GLORIA STEINEM Think about spam filters; if email didn't come from someone that someone you know knows, that... CLAY SHIRKY Maybe it's my age that makes me very conscious of loose threads, but I don't think that'... STANLEY MARCUS My father came from an intellectual and studious avenue as opposed to a brawler's avenue. So I h... TOM HARDY I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. CRAIG GROESCHEL I'm a girl in boy's clothing. I like to get a little rough. I prefer mud to makeup. That'... SARAH SHAHI I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long tim... SALLY FIELD I just worry about the girls who look up to me. I don't want them to think I starve myself or do... ELLEN POMPEO I love someone who can make me laugh. And someone who's secure - I think that's sexy. ROSELYN SANCHEZ For my eyes, I think an eyelash curler makes me look much more awake, even when I haven't gotten... JULIA RESTOIN ROITFELD It's like people call me a rock star or this or that. And I go, 'Don't call me that. I d... MEAT LOAF It was implanted in me that I came from a different class - an elevated class. I was cushioned by se... SPIKE MILLIGAN I think of music as creating a space. I like to put things in that are comforting to me and are nost... JAMILA WOODS I came from a small town and at school in one class there was me, a member from Depeche Mode and som... ALISON MOYET People were being so mean as a result of my ability - a gift, really. So I think that's what mak... LAURIEANN GIBSON When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most i... RIHANNA You know, I put my little brother in the movies and he's still in the pictures. My mother makes ... SAM RAIMI I was an aspiring astrophysicist, and that's how I defined myself, not by my skin color. People ... NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON I'm a creative person who had a lot of dark time in my life. I can still get to it: I can still ... SHANE MCANALLY I got behind that pencil and nothing happened for many years, but since they put me in the Songwrite... OTIS BLACKWELL Equal pay reviews must therefore look beyond gender and explore other diversity dimensions such as a... DIANAH WORMAN I have a harder time eating properly than I do exercising. It's easier for me to add an activity... CARRIE FISHER I have to feel myself doing what's right. If I'm the arbiter of that instead of letting the ... TIM COOK I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as someb... OPRAH WINFREY I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm ... JAMES HILLMAN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES The Ricky that the public see, whether it be on screen as a character, in public, or on social media... RICKY WHITTLE Some people who meet me might think I starve myself, because there's such an assumption that bei... TAMSIN EGERTON I'm from a small town in North Carolina and went to a small college and didn't think that so... FORTUNE FEIMSTER American Idol transcends age, gender, ethnicity, everything. CARRIE UNDERWOOD I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me. JUDY COLLINS I have a fear of poverty in old age. I have this vision of myself living in a skip and eating cat fo... JENNY ECLAIR It's not my plan or whatever in my life to be a sex symbol. It never is. You are who you are, bu... JESSICA BIEL I think anything we do outside of Gym Class Heroes still falls under the Gym Class Heroes umbrella. ... TRAVIE MCCOY I think it's not misplaced in 'Doctor Who' to have someone who is little bit edgy and ma... PETER CAPALDI There's always a version of me who is the narrator. And I make myself look better than other peo... PAT CONROY The thought of someone spending $20 to come and see me and saying, 'Oh, I prefer the record and ... ADELE When I look back over my life it's almost as if there was a plan laid out for me - from the litt... JANE GOODALL I love a challenge. And I love defying limitation, gender stereotypes, and people's expectations... GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE I figured there's nobody who's going to beat me or shoot me or crucify me. I can't help ... RALPH HALL As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that... LUPITA NYONG'O I have a very hard time picturing myself in a room with some type of goo oozing out of an air vent a... KATIE ASELTON It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes. SALLY FIELD I try to play characters who are different from myself, so I feel like this character is someone who... RYAN GOSLING Serious and intense people, they drain you. But someone who's an idiot, like myself, they're... PAULY SHORE Do not define me by my gender or my socio-economic status, Noah Willis. Do not tell me who I am and ... MEGAN JACOBSON It's beautiful to have people look me in the eyes and actually treat me like a human. ELLAR COLTRANE You know, my mum's always encouraged me and never made my gender an issue, I guess. She brought ... PALOMA FAITH I am a woman not defined by gender nor by class. I am a woman defined by relevance and social standi... THUTHULA NAMHLA DLEPU I am, as I've said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary... BILLY JOEL It makes me proud, and it makes me scared. More than anything, I want to be an actor and I want to k... RANDY HARRISON I don't think of myself as a brand. Branding to me feels like a position or identity that's ... DAVID ROCKWELL I'm really an inner spirit that only makes itself known through the music. A lot of people think... FAITH EVANS Self-reflection is so healthy. Journaling works for me - when I record the details of what I'm g... KELLY ROWLAND We get the papers: I prefer broadsheets because I had the fear of God put into me by the tabloids an... NEIL MORRISSEY I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it's really important to me to give people who look... SANDRA OH I really don't get nervous when I perform -it's more of an exciting feeling than anything el... ALEXA VEGA I guess I do have a little punk side in me; it’s the unconventional side of me that forges forward... SCOTTIE SOMERS There's a part of me that wishes I could go out in T-shirt and jeans, 'cause I really love P... BAT FOR LASHES I think depression creates in me an urgent need to write, but I also believe that daily stress, and ... FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK Being a keen observer, I would think to myself, who is approachable? Who is someone I'd like to know... SUSAN C. YOUNG There are people that bring artists to me to look at it, and it's a question of whether I like t... BABYFACE When I get up in the morning and put on a pink or a green wig, I see myself as a piece of animation.... NICKI MINAJ I still feel like I've got a lot of great football in front of me and the way that I've take... AARON RODGERS When I'm meditating on an idea, I try to let the idea completely saturate me to the point where ... MATISYAHU The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working c... MARTIN AMIS The finest lesson I've learned with age is that all I need is a small team of comrades who inspi... LAKE BELL I'm not as successful as Pixar or Dreamworks, and that is disappointing to me, because I think m... BILL PLYMPTON I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a bo... BRAD PAISLEY I think teaching keeps me honest because if I'm up in front of a class talking about what I thin... AIMEE BENDER The age of 20 was all about stupid things. I did crazy things but never lost it. I was, you know, a ... AYELET ZURER I like being a storyteller. I'm bored with myself; I like to write about others. I have a lot of... JILL SOBULE When I stopped seeing my mother through the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birt... NANCY FRIDAY I love doing eyes - my signature look is a cat eye. I think it's so feminine, and it reminds me ... MALLORY JANSEN If you want proof that 'Catfish' was real, just put me in an audition room and watch me fall... NEV SCHULMAN Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class. BETH HENLEY It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on screen. I think of myself, and feel like I... GENE HACKMAN I think if I heard someone else talking about their life, describing all the problems I've had, ... NAS I don't pick up my work at all. If it's something that's still in progress and I have th... ADRIAN TOMINE In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have ... SUSAN WIGGS I never get recognised here in London, which I like. Once a year, someone comes up to me and asks if... CAREY MULLIGAN It's not like I force myself to think of sad things, but... it's more that I make music beca... JAMIE XX Every job I take, within minutes I'm thinking, 'I can't do this.' I think it's w... RAY WINSTONE There was this girl who went to my school, and she did a Nikki Giovanni poem, 'Ego Tripping,'... SAMIRA WILEY In a novel, I think you have a contract with the reader to make the character representative - of a ... EDMUND WHITE I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer... IMAN I wanted to be heard myself, which is hard in a household of people who were very showy. It forced m... MARTHA WAINWRIGHT In my family, I would never dare to think of being Paris Hilton! And to me, that doesn't look li... EVE HEWSON Do I think it's doomsday for the male gender? No, ... I look around the world, and it seems to me th... JACQUELINE KING I am willing to put myself through anything; temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as lon... DIANA NYAD From an early age, I learned to invest myself emotionally in what unfolded before me on screen. DAVID PERRY I love pampering myself, so going for a massage or getting a mani-pedi makes me feel instantly bette... JESSICA LOWNDES I take a little bit from everybody and add that to my life to make me, me. I wanna be nobody else bu... NAYVADIUS CASH I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their... JERRY SEINFELD From a young age, I was rubbing elbows with a very different kind of person and social class, and I ... DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE And really, the basis, I think, of achieving some success in what I want to do today comes from my m... SAM DONALDSON The most interesting character to me is someone who is stuck in the no man's land between Belief... RICHARD DOOLING
More Amor Towles
For it is a fact that a man can be profoundly out of step with his times. A man may have been born i... AMOR TOWLES There are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense. AMOR TOWLES As a youth, I always did a good deal of reading in the summer months, having suffered since birth fr... AMOR TOWLES In the contemporary world, we think of politeness as surface behavior, like frosting - it's swee... AMOR TOWLES By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, tha... AMOR TOWLES Some writers such as John Cheever and Raymond Carver seem to draw artistic energy from analyzing the... AMOR TOWLES Whichever wine was within, it was decidedly not identical to its neighbors. On the contrary, the con... AMOR TOWLES Yes, thought the Count, the world does spin. In fact, it spins on its axis even as it revolves aroun... AMOR TOWLES I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someo... AMOR TOWLES It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. S... AMOR TOWLES For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we h... AMOR TOWLES For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nea... AMOR TOWLES For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disincl... AMOR TOWLES He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunti... AMOR TOWLES if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. AMOR TOWLES After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lo... AMOR TOWLES Russia was the last to leave the 19th century and the most rapid to enter the mandates of the 20th c... AMOR TOWLES All the historical elements should feel organic to the story but not hammered down to serve a purpos... AMOR TOWLES Growing up, I didn't come from a musical family. Neither of my parents played an instrument, san... AMOR TOWLES To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of ... AMOR TOWLES I make extensive outlines before I write a book. I usually know what will happen. I know the charact... AMOR TOWLES When I visited Moscow for the first time in 1998, I wandered into the historic Metropol Hotel as a c... AMOR TOWLES For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too. How humbly it bows its head as the emperor ... AMOR TOWLES In retrospect, the pace of change in the arts and industry in the nineteenth century seems pretty gl... AMOR TOWLES One restaurant I visit without fail, whenever I'm in the Bay Area, is the Boulevard at 1 Mission... AMOR TOWLES It is a bit of a cliche to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course ... AMOR TOWLES I suppose we don't rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give p... AMOR TOWLES The romantic interplay that we were having wasn't the real game--it was a modified version of the ga... AMOR TOWLES If only someone had told me about the confidence-boosting nature of guns, I’d have been shooting t... AMOR TOWLES After meeting someone by chance and throwing off a few sparks, can there be any substance to the fee... AMOR TOWLES When a mother loses a daughter, she grieves over the future that her daughter will never have, but s... AMOR TOWLES I'm willing to be under anything...as long as it isn't somebody's thumb. AMOR TOWLES What was your favorite day of the year? The summer solstice. June twenty-first. The longest day of t... AMOR TOWLES I told him I'd always found the description a little too long on adjectives and a little too short o... AMOR TOWLES Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that's about as good... AMOR TOWLES If you could relive one year in your life, which one would it be? [...] The upcoming one. AMOR TOWLES For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense. AMOR TOWLES For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wo... AMOR TOWLES Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, ... AMOR TOWLES I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. AMOR TOWLES Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish. AMOR TOWLES Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the yo... AMOR TOWLES Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people's vacations? AMOR TOWLES —I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said. —Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in... AMOR TOWLES I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens n... AMOR TOWLES As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion - whether they're triggered by ange... AMOR TOWLES Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding o... AMOR TOWLES Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you - that sort of inner tranquility that they write... AMOR TOWLES That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to. AMOR TOWLES Slurring is the cursive of speech... AMOR TOWLES As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going t... AMOR TOWLES If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss ab... AMOR TOWLES ...be careful when choosing what you're proud of--because the world has every intention of using it ... AMOR TOWLES It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conv... AMOR TOWLES In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred i... AMOR TOWLES As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend... AMOR TOWLES As awful as the crimes of Stalinism were, the vast majority of the Russian population was trying to ... AMOR TOWLES The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes. AMOR TOWLES Harry Potter's publishing house has waited until the end of the day to create maximum expectation. T... MARIA AMOR CALLEJA dont be too confident when someone tells you they love you, the real question is UNTIL WHEN? becoz j... NIESA AMOR IBARRA There's nothing quite like Harry Potter in publishing. It's No. 1. Apart from that, it is a true soc... MARIA AMOR CALLEJA