Quotes About Identity

I stare at Isabel without blinking. I stare until I can see the pale roots of her natural hair and the expensive skin cream that changed her skin from milk to olive and the colored lenses that gave her yellow eyes and I wonder how she changed her breasts and ass and shortened her legs. I stare at her until her eyes are pointed and her teeth glitter like fangs and I have to close my eyes. If she said her name was Lucy and she faked her death I would believe her.

All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows more on some people.

Memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.

to put it differently, you are not always the same person, and you are less consistent over time than you think. But somewhat reassuringly, you are more similar to yourself yesterday than you are to another person today.

Most important, of course, we all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.

We all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.

Wir sind immer in Geschichten

Ich habe diese Welt nicht anders vorgefunden als gehüllt in mein Bewusstsein; wie also kann ich gehen, ohne sie mitzunehmen? Und gesetzt selbst, dass sie alle, Berge, Häuser, Sonne (und ich bezweifle es) durch und für andere Wesen fortbestehen, - es werden andere sein, nicht diese Berge, diese Häuser, diese Sonne.

But why people? I asked. What does he care about people? He's a bear.

Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.

In einer anderen Nacht kamen ihm plötzlich die Wissenschaft, seine Arbeit, sein gesamtes Leben fremd und überflüssig vor, weil er keinen Freund hatte und außer seiner Mutter niemanden, dem er etwas bedeutete. Aber auch das ging, wie alles, vorüber.

Nimeni n-o s? te ?tie, se gânde?te ea. Nimeni n-o s?-?i aminteasc? de tine, doar eu, mama ta, n-o s? uit, fiindc? n-am voie s? uit. Pentru c? to?i ceilal?i or s? te uite.

He looks around, he suddenly recognizes in his colleagues what others see in him: tax officials. And he is one of them. How could it have happened that he became a tax official? On the computer he looks at pictures from his school days. Back then he wasn't a tax official yet.

Of course it didn't prove anything of the sort, it merely showed that self-examination disturbs the personality, deflects the will, and zaps the mind; it proved that no one, seen clearly from the outside, resembles themselves at all.

I don't know what's worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be, and feel alone.

I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being—one of many ways—and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.

Although we know the end of the maze holds death (and it is something I have not always known--not long ago the adolescent in me thought death could happen only to other people), I see now that the path I choose through that maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.

First, we exist, and next, we create ourselves.

We slough off the responsibility to create ourselves by shrugging and claiming, "That's just the way I am.

According to Sartre, we are historically prone to thinking of ourselves as objects due to the Judeo-Christian credo that God stamped us with our essence from the beginning; it is His prerogative. So to think that we are able to stamp ourselves is a sacrilege.

You laugh at me because I am different; I laugh because you are all the same.

Experiences that we remember intrusively, despite desperately wanting to banish them from our minds, are closely linked to, and sometimes threaten, our perceptions of who we are and who we would like to be.

We don't always see ourselves as superior, but we almost always see ourselves as unique. Even when we do precisely what others do, we tend to think that we're doing it for unique reasons.

My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams," Mr. Plumbean said. - The Big Orange Splot