Quotes About Identity

Perder-se é um achar-se perigoso.

I want to seize my is. And like a bird I sing hallelujah into the air. And my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and love is not followed by an hallelujah.

I am obscure to myself. I let myself happen. I unfold only in the now. I am rudely alive.

Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words - and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses words with which thoughts are produce. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows?

It is curious that I can't say who I am. That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can't say it.

Are we fruit of the same tree? No - Angela is everything I wanted to be and never was. What is she? She's the waves of the sea. While I'm the dense and gloomy forest. I'm in the depths. Angela scatters in sparkling fragments. Angela is my vertigo. Angela is my reverberation.

Yes, she felt a perfect animal inside her. The thought of one day setting this animal loose disgusted her. Perhaps for fear of lack of aesthetic. Or dreading a revelation… No, no, she repeated, you mustn't be afraid to create.

I'm no more than a comma in life. I who am a colon. Thou, thou art my exclamation.

But the most important word in the language has but two letters: is. Is. I am at its core. I still am. I am at the living and soft centre. Still. It sparkles and is elastic.

I'm not a synonym—I'm a proper noun.

I'm so frightened that I shall be able to accept the notion that I have lost myself only if I imagine that someone is holding my hand.

The world would only cease to terrify me if I became the world. If I were the world, I wouldn't be afraid. If we are the world, we are moved by a delicate radar that guides.

Not knowing yourself is inevitable, and not knowing yourself demands courage.

The courage to be something other than what one is, to give birth to oneself, and to leave one's former body on the ground. And without having answered to anyone about whether it was worthwhile.

Death is an encounter with oneself.

Refugiei-me na doideira porque a razão não me bastava.

Clarice Lispector

Se eu me confirmar e me considerar verdadeira, estarei perdida porque não saberei onde engastar meu novo modo de ser - se eu for adiante nas minhas visões fragmentárias, o mundo inteiro terá que se transformar para eu caber nele.

Who hasn't ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

When I surprise myself at the mirror I am not frightened because I think I am ugly or beautiful. It is because I discover I am of a different nature. After not having seen myself for a while I almost forget I am human, I forget my past and I am as free from end and awareness as something merely alive. I am also surprised, eyes open pale at the mirror, that there are so many things in me besides what I know, so many things always silent.

Se não tivesse sido eu, eu não saberia, e tendo sido eu, eu soube.

Sou um monstro ou isso é ser uma pessoa?

Who hasn't ever wondered: am I monster or is this what it means to be a person?

Quem já não se perguntou: sou um monstro ou isto é ser uma pessoa?