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Identity Quotes
"It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity."
19
"You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all."
19
"Legion hissed like a startled cat, the noise scraping at Reyes's skin. "Me no boy. You think me a boy?Everyone stopped, stared. Even Aeron.Reyes was the first to find his voice. "You're a girl?A nod. "Me pretty."Yes, you are. Reyes exchanged a glance with Lucien. "Beautiful."
19
"A label locks me into a definition that people use to control me. A vision graces me with an idea that serves to release me."
19
"Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that."
19
"Some thirty inches from my noseThe frontier of my Person goes,And all the untilled air betweenIs private pagus or demesne.Stranger, unless with bedroom eyesI beckon you to fraternize,Beware of rudely crossing it:I have no gun, but I can spit."
19
"I think you could wear a paper bag and still look good."
19
"Black people are not the descendants of kings. We are-and I say this with big pride-the progeny of slaves. If there's any majesty in our struggle, it lies not in fairy tales but in those humble origins and the great distance we've traveled since. Ditto for the dreams of a separate but noble past. Cosby's, and much of black America's, conservative analysis flattens history and smooths over the wrinkles that have characterized black America since its inception."
19
"This is the us you wanted us to be, Gwen."
19
"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."
18
"Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?"
18
"It's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners!"
18
"Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that."
18
"How long have you been a Wiccan?''A what?''A pagan. A witch.''I'm not a witch,' I said, glancing out the door. 'I'm a wizard.'Sanya frowned. 'What is the difference?''Wizard has a Z'He looked at me blankly.'No one appreciates me.' I muttered."
18
"Christ did not ask or want to be what he was not."
18
"Your Twitter Profile is your business card."
18
"Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves."
18
"The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent."
18
"I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves."
18
"Business or profession?''I guess you'd call me a writer.'No profession,' said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest."
18
"I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be."
18
"There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I am such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."
18
"As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together."
17
"I am a typical example of Western Jew. This means I don't have a moment of peace, that nothing has come easily to me, not just the present and the future, but even the past, that thing that each man receives as his birth-right: even that I have to conquer, and perhaps that is the hardest task."
17
"In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream."
17
"Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself."
17
"There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character."
17
"Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me - in sober truth a disinherited son - naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body."
17
"Arab nationalism in its traditional form was the way in which secular Arab Christians like Edward had found and kept a place for themselves, while simultaneously avoiding the charge of being too 'Western.' It was very noticeable among the Palestinians that the most demonstrably 'extreme' nationalists-and Marxists-were often from Christian backgrounds. George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh used to be celebrated examples of this phenomenon, long before anyone had heard of the cadres of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. There was an element of overcompensation involved, or so I came to suspect."
17
"I can't help what I have any more than you can help what you don't."
17
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