Quotes About Identity

I clarified that I myself was Colombian. What is 'being Colombian'? I'm not sure, I replied. It's an act of faith. Like being Norwegian, she said, nodding. I can recall nothing further of what was said that night.

Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.

I carried out my plan because I felt The Chief had some fear of those of my race, of those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me. I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies.

I suspected once that any human life, however intricate and full it might be, consisted in reality of one moment: the moment when a man knows for all time who he is.

Soy esa torpe intensidad que es un alma.

Lo que hace un hombre es como si lo hicieran todos los hombres. Por eso no es injusto que una desobediencia en un jardín contamine al género humano; por eso no es injusto que la crucifixión de un solo judío baste para salvarlo. Acaso Schopenhauer tiene razón: yo soy los otros, cualquier hombre es todos los hombres, Shakespeare es de algún modo el miserable John Vincent Moon.

Lo que decimos pocas veces se parece a nosotros.

Instinctively he had already become proficient in the habit of simulating that he was someone, so that others would not discover his condition as no one; in London he found the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person.

I came to abominate my body, I came to sense that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as monstrous as two faces.

Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet?... these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious.

What will my redeemer be like? I wonder. Will he be a bull or a man? Will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man? Or will he be like me?

Gerçekte, uykudan uyan?p da kendi kendisiyle kar??laÅŸmayan insan yoktur.

Yo he escrito también algunos cuentos en los cuales traté ambiciosa e inultimente de ser Kafka

I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror

A veces en las tardes una cara Nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo; El arte debe ser como ese espejo Que nos revela nuestra propia cara. (At times in the evenings a face Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror; Art should be like that mirror Which reveals to us our own face.)

was wir sind, ist unsere eigene Erinnerung, wir sind jenes trügerische Museum veränderlicher Formen, jener Haufen Spiegelscherben

Con otra voz dijo que la guerra servía,como la mujer,para q se probaran los hombres,y que,antes de entrar en batalla,nadie sabía quién es.

Seré todos o nadie. Seré el otro Que sin saberlo soy, el que ha mirado Ese otro sueño, mi vigilia. La juzga, Resignado y sonriente.

Nationalism only allows for affirmations, and every doctrine that discards doubt, negation, is a form of fanaticism and stupidity.

Orice destin, oricât de lung sau de complicat ar fi, se reduce de fapt la un unic moment: momentul în care omul înÅ£elege pentru totdeauna cine este.

Llegué a abominar de mi cuerpo, llegué a sentir que dos ojos, dos manos, dos pulmones, son tan monstruosos como dos caras.

La historia era increíble, en efecto, pero se impuso a todos, porque sustancialmente era cierta. Verdadero era el tono de Emma Zunz, verdadero el pudor, verdadero el odio. Verdadero también era el ultraje que había padecido; sólo eran falsas las circunstancias, la hora y uno o dos nombres propios.

To be not a man, but the projection of another man's dream- what incomparable humiliation, what vertigo!

Un hombre se confunde, gradualmente, con la firma de su destino; un hombre es, a la larga, sus circunstancias.