Quotes About Identity

Value people because of who they were deep down, not because of their names or their parents' clout.

But do you know this idea of the imaginary homeland? Once you set out from shore on your little boat, once you embark, you'll never truly be at home again. What you've left behind exists only in your memory, and your ideal place becomes some strange imaginary concoction of all you've left behind at every stop.

Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.

But we're lost in a world of appearances now.

But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive. No longer young, no longer pretty, no longer loved, or sweet, or lovable, unmasked, writhing on the ground for all to see in my utter ingloriousness, there's no telling what I might do

While other girls were reading teen magazines and romances, you found The Story of O, and it was like a homecoming." "Yes," she breathed. Oh god, yes. "You

Being himself was more exhausting than impersonating a stage character.

To get mad at being called a "little boy" is a proof that you indeed are one

Good guys are either taken or gay

The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.

A man has only one escape from his old self — to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.

I've never before understood that I too can be needed and wanted. I've been the youngest child for so long that I never seen myself any other way.

My child, I've given you my name. Don't take it in vain. Keep it clean. Let it mean something when you are called a Christian. Don't let my name fall into disrepute because of you.

Yo, poeta de oficio, condenada tantas veces

I work only with lost and founds.

Never suffer because you don't have an opinion on this or that topic. Never suffer because you are not something or because you are.

They gave me a name and alienated me from myself.

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

She was incompetent. Incompetent for life. She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her.

First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask herself 'Who am I?', she would fall flat on her face. For the question 'Who am I?' creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.

Escrevo por não ter nada a fazer no mundo: sobrei e não há lugar para mim na terra dos homens. Escrevo porque sou um desesperado e estou cansado, não suporto mais a rotina de me ser e se não fosse a sempre novidade que é escrever, eu me morreria simbolicamente todos os dias. (A hora da estrela)

She had no idea how to cope with life and she was only vaguely aware of her own inner emptiness. Were she capable of explaining herself, she might well confide: the world stands outside me. I stand outside myself.

Depersonalization like the deposing of useless individuality— the loss of everything that can be lost, while still being. To take away from yourself little by little, with an effort so attentive that no pain is felt, to take away from yourself like one who gets free of her own skim, her own characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way I am most easily viewed by others and end up being superficially recognizable to myself.

I don't want beauty, I want identity.