Quotes About Identity

They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.

He stares at me as though I am a stranger, but I have never felt less like one. For the first time, we are both unmasked.

Can't get away from your own self.

What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I'm not?

I'm not a monster, I'd told her, back when I said I would never hurt Oak. But maybe being a monster was my calling.

If I'm not a murderer," asked Corny, "how come I keep killing people?

You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.

I am the Queen of Elfhame. Even though I am the queen in exile, I am still the queen. And that means Madoc isn't just trying to take Cardon's throne. He's trying to take mine.

Vivi is right; it cost me something to be the way I am. But I do not know what. And I don't know if I can get it back. I don't even know if I want it.

I want to have some reaction. I want to tremble or feel nauseated. I want to be the person who begins to weep. I want to be anyone but the person I am, who looks around to be sure no one saw, who wipes off my knife in the dirt, wipes off my hand on his clothes, and gets out of there before the guards come.

I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven't been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I've been fighting my own shadow.

I can walk into someone's house, kiss their wife, sit down at their table, and eat their dinner. I can lift a passport at an airport, and in twenty minutes it will seem like it's mine. I can be a blackbird staring in the window. I can be a cat creeping along a ledge. I can go anywhere I want and do the worst things I can imagine, with nothing to ever connect me to those crimes. Today I look like me, but tomorrow I could look like you. I could be you.

Being infected, being a vampire, it' s always you. Maybe it' s more you than ever before. It' s you as you always were, deep down inside.

They say that nameless things change constantly -that names fix them in place like pins. But without a name, a thing isn't quite real either.

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be

I am no murderer," says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.

A king is not his crown.

We labor under so many illusions about ourselves until we're stripped bare. Being infected, being a vampire, it's always you. Maybe it's more you than ever before. You, distilled. You, boiled down like a sauce. But it's you as you always were, deep down inside.

Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does.

That's what I've been for years. An unsister. An undaughter. An unperson. A girl with a hole for a life. How appropriate to have my tongue cut out, when silence has been my refuge and my cage.

You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don't know who I am at all. And either way I'm not happy.

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong?

It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what's left is all construct, all artifice.

Clap her in chains,¨ Says Randalin. I feel a guards hand close on my arm. Then Cardans voice comes. ¨Do not touch her. She is my wife,¨ Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. ¨The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.¨ Page 147