[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.

Edward Abbey
[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for...
[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for...
[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for...
[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for...
About This Quote

The truth is, we all have to work at being real. When we're born we're just a biological process to get from one place to another: a baby comes out of the womb and then it's food and sleep and all that stuff. We don't even know what we are. But by the time we get to be adults, we feel like we know ourselves pretty well, but we still find ourselves surprised by who we really are.

We think, "I've got this thing inside me, it's called a personality. I'm one of these three types of people." Then things happen in life that kind of push us out of the box, so now our personalities are sort of overlapped with other personalities. This happens when you have relationships with others or when you have children or when you have friends or something like that.

That's why I'm saying that even though everyone thinks they know themselves pretty well, they're not really sure because they're constantly being pushed out of the box by other people’s personalities.

Source: Postcards From Ed: Dispatches And Salvos From An American Iconoclast

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