Quotes About Identity

Of what? Wasn't he my very own brother? Shouldn't that cover over everything else in a blanket of sanctimony? Surely I could trust him—but with everything? With my secret identity, my Fortress of Solitude—and even Lily Anne, my Kryptonite?

Cody stood looking up at Brian, his feet spread apart and his hands hanging stiffly at his sides. Their eyes locked together and I could hear the leathery unfolding of wings between them, the dark and sibilant greeting of twin interior specters. There was a look of belligerent wonder on Cody's face, and he just stared for a long moment and Brian stared back, and finally Cody looked at me. "Like me," he said. "Shadow Guy.

They didn't need to know a thing about me to decide that I had overstayed my time on planet Earth. I

But out of the many ironies in my current unhappy contretemps, perhaps the worst of all is that I, Dexter the Monster, Dexter the Ultimate Outsider, Dexter the Nonhuman—I, too, am reduced in extremis to that ultimate human lament: Why Me?

Of all the odd thoughts I could have, that might seem the oddest, but there it was. Dexter was in a dither over doing what he does best, merely because it would be a rush job. Was my new life of luxury rotting away the hard and happy core of the monster that is me? Turning me into an old maid incapable of the simplest and most well-justified endings? Was I really so straitlaced?

I'll die a meter maid, Dexter.

God, it's like I have something, deep down inside of me, that i think is undeserving of love.

The Schwarzkogler in question turned out to be Rudolf, an Austrian who considered himself an artist, and in order to prove it he reportedly sliced his penis off a little bit at a time and took photographs of the process. This was such an artistic triumph that he continued his career, until his masterpiece finally killed him.

Nothing else loves me, or ever will. Not even—especially—me. I know what I am and that is not a thing to love.

And yet—I could imitate all those things perfectly. And I actually wanted to. I had no interest in a sexual relationship. I wanted a disguise; Rita was exactly what I was looking for.

He also had on a T-shirt that said I'M WITH BUTTHEAD, and he was draped with a camera and pensively clutching a bouquet. And although I say pensively, it was a very different kind of pensing, because his head had been neatly removed and replaced with a gaudy spray of tropical flowers.

teeth. I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.

Of course, there was Lily Anne, the living extension of all that is Me, my DNA shipment into the future. And

I flipped through my file and found his name: George Kukarov. He lived on Dilido Island, a very nice Beach address not too far from his club.

knows where he is now. Not here, that's for sure. Hope the Krauts didn't grab him. Buford…Dammit!

Ichioka, Gee, Ichioka's brother Victor, Vicci Wong, Floyd Huen, and Richard Aoki—dubbed themselves the "Asian-American Political Alliance," coining "Asian-American" in emulation of their Afro-American fellows

This wasn't the first time Asians of different ethnicities had been classified as a single group: at various times before this moment, we'd been lumped together as "Mongoloids," "Orientals," "Asiatics," and a variety of interchangeable slurs related to the color of our skin, the shape of our eyes, and the things we eat (or are alleged to eat).

by the end of the Seventies, most Asians in America were recent immigrants, who naturally weren't inclined to see themselves through the lens of being "Asian." They thought of themselves first as members of their own specific ethnic communities, and second as aspirational Americans; the pan-ethnic organizing work of the Asian American pioneers of the Sixties made as little sense to them as it might to the relatives they'd left behind in Asia.

in 1941, the iconic periodical Life published an article called "How to Tell Japs from the Chinese" to prevent vigilantes from accidentally attacking Chinese "allies" as they went out to hunt "enemy" Japs, pointing out the "parchment yellow complexion" and "scant beard" of Chinese versus the "earthy yellow complexion" and "heavy beard" one would expect to see among Japanese.

I'm really not the cold fish everyone thinks I am.

Rhyme couldn't remember what he looked like. From his voice he sounded fit and athletic, but then Rhyme supposed he himself might seem like an Olympian to someone who couldn't see his destroyed body.

didn't seem to be the nickname sort. Beautiful people rarely were. 'Let's

Dellray had advanced degrees—including psychology and philosophy (yes, one could philosophize as a hobby)—but he somehow fell naturally into a street patois of his own making, not gang-talk, not African American Vernacular English. It was, like his clothing and his penchant for reading Heidegger and Kant to his children, pure Dellray.

What's your name?" "Stu." He eyed me carefully. "You were asking some things? In the store?" His statements were inflected as questions. I