I think that everyone who falls into this category of insecure overachievers is sort of doing that same that same thing trying to trying to get to the baseline, get up to the baseline on my best days. Now, it's something totally different. It's like, right, I feel good about myself. Things are fine. I don't have to do anything just to feel like I've earned my right to exist on the planet.
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We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. And what we are is largely what we have consented to become, through the daily, unremarked choices that accumulate into a character — and finally a fate.
Anaïs Nin — Seduction of the Minotaur
Holmes is a very special and powerful kind of liar — someone for whom deception and manipulation are as automatic and as continuous as breathing.
Noah Smith
The most common form of despair is not being who you are. And yet the self is not a fixed thing to be discovered, but a possibility to be created — which is perhaps why so many prefer the despair.
Søren Kierkegaard — The Sickness Unto Death