Quotes About Identity

If we want to give our children what they need to thrive, we must honor their basic nature- boyish or girlish, introverted or extroverted, wild or mellow.

I swear, in Syria nobody used to ask whether you're Muslim or Christian. We had no idea what religion our friends were.

Arabs used to produce science and algebra and now we're famous for killing.

Today, the word "refugee" is used in a horrible way. It's something either to be pitied or blamed for everything. Overpopulation? It's the refugees. Rents going up? It's the refugees. Crime? It's the refugees. If you label people refugees, they remain refugees for the rest of their lives.

Everything in Jordan bothered me. My family, the government, the bad way the Jordanians treated us.

In Sicily they asked us if we were educated: engineers, teachers, doctors . . . if you said yes, they took your fingerprints so you stay in Italy. If you said no, they told you to keep moving to northern Europe.

It was humiliating. Syrians were treated like a burden. By the time I finished university in 2013, I was scared shitless to stay in the Arab world.

Here in Germany they respect that I'm strong and independent. But I've also realized how Syrian I am. The way I enjoy human interaction, the way I let people into my life—this is our Syrian, our Arab culture.

In the future, I will have grandchildren who speak Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish. If they don't learn Arabic, they will be strangers to each other. They won't have any traces of where we came from. They won't be Syrian. And I will live in exile and die in exile.

Many people died, including good friends. I went to the hospital to see them one last time. In one corner there was a mix of body parts from five different people. They couldn't identify them, so they buried them all together.

Then another ISIS fighter stopped me on the street one day. He said, "You can't look like that here." He was from Belgium. To me it was funny. You come here and are going to tell me what to wear? He said, "This is Islamland." I said, "No, this is Syria.

And Kris." Thorne added. "Don't define yourself by what you read in the cold context of online know-it-all websites.

Father, it's me. Kris," I said gently. He blinked but did not move. "Kris. My favorite most beautiful son.

After all, the more women are developed internally, the more this is threatening to a society that insists on seeing them merely externally.

As far as I know, Gwyneth Paltrow has not compared herself to me today, so I've decided that I will not compare myself to her.

The girls who choose Bryn Mawr," I said, "have often been outcasts and misfits. When they come to Bryn Mawr, they're transformed." And I set forth my theory of our empowerment in our collective oddity.

I wanted to peel myself off of me.

People are crazy, he says. Havent you figured that out? No one is what they seem. And the older we get, the better we hide.

Am I a good mother? The best mother you could ever want?

The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.

Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, "Respect me; I'm a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.

But don't men have breast and womb envy?

What defines us isn't how we behave when things are good, Andrew, but how we respond when they aren't.