Quotes About Identity

She was a far better mother when she had an audience.

I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize I'm a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who don't exist.

about six months ago, after my fortieth, I started to feel so...the only word I can think of is 'bland.' Or 'flat' might be a better word.

No one warned you that having children reduced you right down to some smaller, rudimentary, primitive version of yourself, where your talents and your education and your achievements meant nothing.

she tried to work out who she really was without people who loved her to reflect back her personality.

It wasn't logical, but the better you knew someone, the more blurry they became. The accumulation of facts made them disappear.

That was the day Alice Mary Love went to the gym and carelessly misplaced a decade of her life.

Cat felt that sense of pleasure and pride that she always felt when she saw her sisters in public. "Look at them!" she wanted to say to people. "My sisters. Aren't they great? Aren't they annoying?

Did one act define who you were forever? Did one evil act as a teenager counteract twenty years of marriage, of good marriage, twenty years of being a good husband and a good father? Murder and you are a murderer. That was how it worked for other people. For strangers.

It seems to make no difference that she still feels exactly the same person as when she was twenty-five, the birthdays just keep right on coming.

Recently, she'd noticed something strange happening when she talked to people in groups. She couldn't quite remember how to be. She'd find herself thinking: Did I just laugh too loudly? Did I forget to laugh? Did I just repeat myself?

She'd looked at the stubble along his jawline, and the thought had crossed her mind: He looks like Clark Kent, but maybe he's really Superman.

Try not to saddle yourself with too distinct a personality too early in life. It might not suit you later on.

Mum used to say that when she met my dad it was like a perfect love story. I thought Patrick was my perfect love story. Except he's not. He's the hypnotist's love story. I'm the ex-girlfriend in the hypnotist's love story. Not the heroine. I'm only a minor character.

I'll never be a normal person ever again. You took that away from me. You made me ABNORMAL and it's lonely being abnormal.

in times of crisis a person's face is somehow stripped back to something essential and universally human: all those labels like "beautiful," "sexy," "plain" became irrelevant.

It wasn't just that her memories of the last ten years were back. It was that her true self, as formed by those ten years, was back. As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadn't experienced ten years of living.

An attractive, elegant, slim woman. The sort of woman she never thought it was possible for her to be. She had become one of those women, those other women, who had seemed too perfectly put together to be real.

Her cup size didn't suit either her personality or profession but she was descended from a long line of short, acerbic, busty women, and so this was her lot.

Did one act define who you were forever?

Veronika had accused her father of being a misogynist and Thomas had told Veronika to stop acting like a pseudo lesbian intellectual.

Their carefully relaxed demeanors hid a fragile defensiveness, as if they expected to be criticized at any moment and they weren't going to stand for it. They both seemed to cling so hard to their chosen personalities. I am this sort of person and therefore I believe this, I think this, I do this and I am right, I'm right, I'm sure I'm right!

Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world. "So, school politics, girls," Madeline said as she carefully

That's true," she'd said, amazed and terrified by the thought. A toddler: an actual miniature person, created by them, belonging to them, separate from them.