Quotes About Self-expression

The extension of the empathic bond is the social glue to establishing a global network of millions of human beings. It's probably not surprising that in the most technologically advanced countries, where self-expression is high, the older theological consciousness, with its emphasis on strict external codes, the communal bond, and a hierarchically organized command and control, is losing its hold. Religious hierarchies make less and less sense in a fl at, networked world.

No more hiding. No more pretending to be something she wasn't. She would wear an older woman's clothes, but she would wear them in such a way that she was honest with herself, with others, and with God. She was a teenager who had been left behind, but she was also one who had seen what was right and acted upon it. She belonged to God now, and she would present herself to him as she really was.

You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!

I could feel it in myself. I felt lighter, unshackled, as if something I had been carrying had fallen away...I just enjoyed the feeling and watched the once amorphous student body separate itself into hundreds of individuals. The pronoun 'we' itself seemed to crack and drift apart in pieces.

I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn, I outgrow it, I change it.

When in doubt, though, counter with your own cool.

At first I was afraid that I would be left defenseless, that I would babble aloud the things I've always been terrified of saying. Instead, opium made me realize that I could say anything I liked without losing my identity.

That's why she keeps her nails long, she says, to be able to scratch and claw.

Your parents don't get to tell your story. Your sisters don't. When he's old enough, even Pat doesn't get to tell your story. I'm your husband and I don't even get to tell it. So I don't care how lovesick this director is, he doesn't tell it. ... No one gets to tell you what your life means! ~Alvis

Then we'll make a deal, you and me. We'll do and say exactly what we mean. And to hell with what anyone thinks about it. If we want to smoke, we'll smoke, if we want to swear, we'll swear. How does that sound?

I mean, who are you if you can't make it up? Especially people like you and me. Are we just supposed to stay the shitheads our parents and high schools sent out into the world, the ones our classmates assumed would do nothing with our lives?

The decision to carve out time and attention to make your work is a breathtaking act of ego. You're saying, "I don't care what everyone else thinks I should be doing with my time. I know this is what I need to do." If

I bet it's easy for you," Celeste said, as she examined her fingers and toes. "What? Flirting?" "Yes." "Depends. There's flirting," Julie said, jokingly pushing her chest out, "and then there's flirting." She tapped the side of her temple. "It's the second one that's hard because you're putting more of yourself out there.

But I do not fit well into any social mold whatsoever. That is not appealing to others.

True cynics kill themselves. The rest are posers, trying to use clever sarcasm and snarky remarks to hide insecurity and the fear that if they put themselves out there, they will fail.

With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.

The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.

Eventually he begins to practice his new signature in the margins of the paper. He tries it in various styles, his hand unaccustomed to the angles of the N, the dotting of the two i's. He wonders how many times he has written his old name, at the top of how many tests and quizzes, how many homework assignments, how many yearbook inscriptions to friends. How many times does a person write his name in a lifetime - a million? Two million?

Relax," Edith says. "The perfect name will come to you in time." Which is when Gogol announces, "There's no such thing." "No such thing as what?" Astrid says. "There's no such thing as a perfect name. I think that human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn eighteen," he adds. "Until then, pronouns.

But it was another to be authoritative; Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult.

When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. You breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.

In questo libro la lingua non è soltanto lo strumento ma anche il soggetto. L'italiano resta la maschera, il filtro, lo sbocco, il mezzo. Il distacco senza il quale non riesco a creare niente. Ed è questo nuovo distacco che mi aiuta a mostrare il mio volto.

The more I work in fashion, the less I dress up. The first pair of jeans I made was for my own body-my "strange body," as I call it.

Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity.