Quotes about Personal Growth

And maybe I'm a little smarter now than I was before for all the stupid things I've done.

I can't lie, I did a lot of really, really stupid things, and it was because it was my way of crying for help.

We all do stupid things.

I have done a lot of stupid things in my life.

But now I've been in the arena for 47 years and I stutter less today than I did in those days.

A large part of me becoming a performer was a make-or-break way of getting over that stutter. I sometimes wonder if, subliminally, that was part of the reason I got into the business, and the more I became a performer and grew in confidence, the less pronounced the stutter became.

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

AJ Styles was a model for me, Chris Hero was a model for me, and to now realize that I am becoming that some mould is humbling.

I want to challenge myself, challenge my styles.

I think I became my own stylist by not knowing any better.

I remember when I wrote songs when I was about 16, they all sounded the same because I didn't know anything. And all the subject matter was all the same because I hadn't actually done much.

'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' not only applies to the deeply personal subject matter of 'To the Bone' but to simply getting a film about people with eating disorders made. Without the brilliant Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, and Karina Miller producing, there's no way this project would be coming to fruition.

I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that's important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.

I believe sometimes we aren't always in charge of everything that we do creatively. We submit to things as we're going on our own journey.

With the 12-step program, if you don't subscribe to that way of life completely, it can be seen as failing, and I think a lot of people can take the parts of that kind of program that they need and not other parts.

I always feel like if you have a smaller crew, you can not only get to know the individual strengths of people more specifically, but then, you also give them a longer runway to be able to apply the knowledge that they have learned to subsequent work.

As I've gotten older, I've become attracted to things that have substance.

I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California.

There's no substitute for the practice of meditation.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

I was the suburban kid of Scottish parents, and the idea of an acting career was so beyond my experience. I didn't even know there were drama schools until a friend told me.

In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become.

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.

Any political agenda and organization which doesn't begin with personal responsibility is just half the argument. It's just not going to succeed.