Quotes About Identity

I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.

called to testify in a court case. Asked to identify himself, he announced that he was the world's greatest architect. When asked how he could make such a statement, he replied, with visible enjoyment and a gleam in his eye, that he had no choice, he was under oath.

Who you are and what you believe in is your real home, the only home no one can take from you, the only home that will last.

We forget most of our past but embody all of it.

I scuttled without a shell, between houses and wives, a snake between skins, a monster of selfishness, my grotesque needs naked and pink.

Her grief has not so much changed her as stripped her down, stripped her body and her face.

He wanted to break me, the me I'd made, the me I'd needed to make, my need, mine, my whole life since I could remember. I didn't want to hear him that night. When I was ready to change I'd change. When life opens up before you, when you don't really know death ... it's easy to promise yourself change. Keeping the lines hard, the parts of me separate, was what I knew, how I lived.

Truth be told, Patrick was staring at something in particular. Before him, at a distance about half the length of the boat, stood a creature of nightmare that returned his stare. Though Patrick could not see the thing's face, he knew it was looking right at him. That was how it always was. No face. No identity. Even the hands were gloved. But it was obvious that the robed and hooded figure had come to haunt him like some hellish visitation.

The strength of a nation is derived from the character, not from the wealth, nor from the multitude of its people.

Companies rebrand so often because people who work in branding know, deep down, that they don't have real jobs and the constant emphasis on logos and color schemes creates a frenzy of activity that distracts them from the creeping existential dread that haunts their every waking moment.

Men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs.

The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.

we swim in our second language, we breathe in our first

Rather than looking outward in an attempt to predict the outcome, you turn inward to your identity. You base the decision on who you are--or who you want to be.

Attachment. That's what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I've learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.

Stop asking kids what they want to be when the grow up. They don't have to define themselves in terms of a career. A single identity can close the door to alternatives. Instead of trying to narrow their options, help them to broaden their possibilities. They don't have to be one thing. They can do many things.

A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it's time to abandon some of your most treasured tools, and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.

Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.

The principle of optimal distinctiveness: we look for ways to fit in and stand out. A popular way to achieve optimal distinctiveness is to join a unique group.... Studies show that people identify more strongly with individuals and groups that share unique similarities. The more rare a group, value, interest, skill, or experience is, the more likely it is to facilitate a bond. And research indicates that people are happier in groups that provide optimal distinctiveness.

You don't magically become a new person as soon as you slip a ring on your finger.

I had never understood before the invisibility of a human. How what we take to be a person is in fact a spirit we can never see.

It was one of those youthful promises that you make to yourself and keep long after you stop recognizing what you are doing, or how it is distorting your life.

even Michael, who never stopped trying to want what we wanted for him. How could he? We're not individuals. We're haunted by the living as well as the dead.

It's easy to make too much of fathers, I want to say. A