Quotes About Identity

I have no country. I don't want one. The root of all evil, the cause of every war—god and country.

Who is "I" in "I hurt"? The one who inflicts the pain or the one who suffers it? And does "hurt" refer to the inflicting or the suffering?

Por eso –me decía medio gritando– el dinero no dice nada de la gente que lo tiene. Nada. El dinero no dice nada de sus dueños. A diferencia de tener, no sé, talento, que sí define a una persona. La relación del dinero con el individuo es completamente accidental.

Imagine the relief of finding out that one is not the one one thought one was

privacy requires a public façade

A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.

I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.

If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.

Now I was someone else. We knew each other in a way we no longer were and never would be again. Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you're so impossibly close is unbearable.

Some say that over time homesickness loses its specific content, that it starts to smolder and only then becomes all-consuming, because it's no longer focused on a concrete home.

Nothing had anything to do with me. I was locked up inside myself and evicted from myself. I didn't belong to them and I was missing me.

Ich trage stilles Gepäck. Ich habe mich so tief und so lang ins Schweigen gepackt, ich kann mich in Worten nie auspacken. Ich packe mich nur anders ein, wenn ich rede.

And I'm different without you. You're the only one who thinks you're never different.

In the trinity of skin, bones, and brown water, men and women lose all difference.

Jak trzeba by ?y?, my?la?am, ?eby pasowa? do tego co si? akurat my?li.

Todo lo que tengo lo llevo conmigo. O: todo lo mío lo llevo conmigo. He llevado todo lo que tenía. No era mío. Era o algo destinado a otras finalidades o de otra persona. […] Llevo un equipaje de silencio. Me he rodeado de un silencio tan hondo y duradero que nunca acierto a abrirme con las palabras. Cuando hablo, solamente me cierro de otra manera.

Irene mai avea o banuiala: ca-si tinea in cap dorul de-acasa mic, facut ghem,ca nu cumva sa-l recunoasca. Ca atunci cand aparea, il reprima.Si ca, pentru a-si sufoca simturile,aseza pe ele cladiri intregi din gandurile ei.

They have good streets here, but everything's so spread out. I am not used to asphalt, it makes my feet hurt, and my brain. I get as tired here in a day as I do back home in a year. That's not home, other people live there now, I wrote to Mother. Home is where you are now... And Mother wrote back to me: How would you know where home is? The place where Toni the clockmaker tends the graves, that's home.

Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.

Voor de controleurs van de heimat en de garandeerders van het wij-gevoel geldt maar één ding : het moet zijn zoals het altijd is geweest, opdat het zo blijft.

Half-starved humans are really neither masculine nor feminine but genderless, like objects.

Quando a gente é aquilo que finge ser, é castigada por isso, é como se fosse uma lei.

E assim como eles, também os semimortos de fome não são de facto nem masculinos nem femininos, mas objectivamente neutros como objectos, talvez comuns-de-dois.

Better to be at home in room and garden with ugly people than belong to strangers.