Quotes About Identity

Con quale frequenza raccontiamo la storia della nostra vita? Aggiustandola, migliorandola, applicandovi tagli strategici? E più avanti si va negli anni, Meno corriamo il rischio che qualcuno intorno a noi ci possa contestare quella versione dei fatti, ricordandoci che la nostra vita non è la nostra vita, ma solo la storia che ne abbiamo raccontato. Agli altri, ma soprattutto noi stessi. da Il senso di una fine

I reread this letter several times. I could scarcely deny its authorship or its ugliness. All I could plead was that I had been its author then, but was not its author now. Indeed, I didn't recognise that part of myself from which the letter came. But perhaps this was simply further self-deception.

To be Russian was to be pessimistic; to be Soviet was to be optimistic.

for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as.

It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart / 'Tis woman's whole existence.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine. Perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description.

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? This

OK, then, well, are you a feminist?' She smiled at me. 'Naturally – I am a woman.

I don't want you to be a woman of mystery. I think I'd hate it. Either it's just a façade, a game, a technique for ensnaring men, or else the woman of mystery is a mystery even to herself, and that's the worst of all.

I was also gone in a sense that I was transformed, made over. You know that story of the man who wakes up and finds he's turned into a beetle? I was the beetle who woke up and saw the possibility of being a man.

Vivimos como si la memoria fuese una consigna de equipajes bien construida y atendida por un personal eficiente.

Tai, kÄ… galiausiai prisimeni, ne visada yra tas pats, kÄ… patyrei

c'est moi» es una alusión a la respuesta que dio Cervantes cuando en su lecho de muerte le preguntaron por el origen de su famoso personaje. Cf. Travestismo.

I didn't doubt for a moment that she had read them all, or that they were the right books to own. Further, they seemed to be an organic combination of her mind and personality, whereas mine struck me as functionally separate, straining to describe a character I hoped to grow into.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.

One had turned gay, after all these years, having suddenly started noticing the napes of young men's necks.

And then there is the inevitable third stylisation—of posthumous memory. Leading to the moment when the last living person to remember you has their very last thought about you. There ought to be a name for that final event, which marks your final extinction.

I considered ducking the appointment, but eventually decided to let the heart speak, and rolled up. I had, after all, spent three days wondering what it would be like to be married to her. In fact, I'd thought about Annick so much that I couldn't remember what she looked like. It was like putting layer after layer of papier mâché over an object and gradually seeing the original shape disappear. How terrible if I failed to recognise the woman I'd already been married to for three days.

From what I did and what I said Let them not seek to find who I was

Nor should they be, but everyone needs to feel they're part of something worthwhile. That, in the last analysis, their life has some meaning in a larger context. The questions is what am I part of? What have I done?

Dabei steckte mir nach meiner traurigen Jugend das altbekannte, für die späte Pubertät so typische Gefühlsgemisch aus Stolz und Verzweiflung noch tief in den Knochen, wenn man sich hochnäsig für etwas Besseres hält, aber gleichzeitig an sozialer Paranoia leidet.

she realized she felt happy, as if the sensation were so lost to her that it took a while for her to identify it.