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Identity Quotes
"There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original."
194
"Recollection builds up our personality. Our individuality is based on all the little pieces we assembled in the past. ['The past was her best friend']"
175
"Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder."
131
"I'm a writer first and a woman after."
124
"I don't have the identity of any of them. I only had the nicks that they used on Internet Relay Chat."
92
"I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen."
77
"I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come."
75
"At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don't see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood."
64
"What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?''Cats don't have names,' it said.'No?' said Coraline.'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."
55
"Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories."
54
"Most people are surprised to hear how they really sound, as the American media uses the call of the red-tailed hawk when showing an eagle. They don't think the eagle sounds regal enough. And so we lie to ourselves about the very identity of our national icon . . ."
54
"It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity."
52
"Understand me. I'm not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul."
50
"When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before."
50
"He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs for one another."
49
"Coming out to gays is a way of affirming sanity and self-worth."
49
"When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent?Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
48
"I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan."
48
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
47
"Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity."
47
"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."
46
"Assertiveness is not what you do, it's who you are!"
44
"I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American."
43
"The human body is not necessarily a human being."
43
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come."
43
"I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves."
43
"In a lifeworld, where we can be what we are, and not what people expect us to be, we can escape a blank and void existence, which is linked to wrecking ennui. Boredom often slips into revulsion and nausea, for not being able to find an identity and not succeeding in acquiring individuality with the quality of authenticity. ['Like a frozen image']"
43
"I can't apologize for who I am any more. Even better, I have no desire to."
43
"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."
43
"Say I Am YouI am dust particles in sunlight.I am the round sun.To the bits of dust I say, Stay.To the sun, Keep moving.I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,I am also the coral reef they founder on.I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.Silence, thought, and voice.The musical air coming through a flute,a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal.Both candle and the moth crazy around it.Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,and the falling away. What is, and what isn't.You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all,say who I am. Say I am You."
42
"You are the stories and incidents that you never tell to anyone. You are the thoughts that you get while standing under the shower. You are those memories that won't lets you sleep at night peacefully. You are those words that you will never say while speaking with someone. You are those scars that you always hide from everyone. You are those little secrets that you will never let the world know. You are everything that you hide under the identity that you call the real you."
41
"Who are you without your labels and attachments to the issues you are passionate about? Remove the emotions, remove the beliefs and associations, and simply focus on the rational and practical applications that promote peaceful progression."
41
"I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room."
40
"Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England - Ireland is not a geographical fragment, but a nation."
39
"Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity."
39
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