Quotes About Identity

Una lingua nuova è quasi una vita nuova, grammatica e sintassi ti rifondo, scivoli dentro un'altra logica e un altro sentimento.

La lingua è vera, ma la maniera in cui la assorbo e utilizzo sembra finita. Un lessico cercato acquisito, resta per sempre anomalo, come se fosse artefatto, anche se non lo è.

In questo libro la lingua non è soltanto lo strumento ma anche il soggetto. L'italiano resta la maschera, il filtro, lo sbocco, il mezzo. Il distacco senza il quale non riesco a creare niente. Ed è questo nuovo distacco che mi aiuta a mostrare il mio volto.

Grazie a questo progetto di scrittura spero che un pezzo di me possa restare qui, ed è consolante, anche se mi auguro che ogni libro al mondo appartenga a tutti, oppure a nessuno, da nessuna parte.

Pet names are never recorded officially, only uttered and remembered

And yet, certain physical aspects of Rhode Island—a state so small within the context of America that on some maps its landmass was indicated only by an arrow pointing to its location—corresponded roughly to those of Calcutta, within India. Mountains to the north, an ocean to the east, the majority of land to the south and west.

Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere. The concepts of exile and return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. In the end I realize that it wasn't a true exile: far from it. I am exiled even from the definition of exile.

He has no ABCD friends at college. He avoids them, for they remind him too much of the way his parents choose to live, befriending people not so much because they like him, but because of a past they happen to share.

Like Udayan, Bela is nowhere. Her name in the search engine leads to nothing... It doesn't mean anything, necessarily. Only that Bela doesn't exist in the dimension where Gauri might learn something about her. Only that she refuses Gauri that access.

Writing in another language reactivates the grief of being between two worlds, of being on the outside. Of feeling alone and excluded.

Until now Ashima has accepted that there is no one to sweep the floor, or do the dishes, or wash clothes, or shop for groceries, or prepare a meal on the days she is tired or homesick or cross. She has accepted that the very lack of such amenities is the American way.

Like the rest of their Bengali friends, [Gogol's] parents expect him to be, if not an engineer, then a doctor, a lawyer, an economist at the very least. These were the fields that brought them to America, his father repeatedly reminds him, the professions that have earned them security and respect.

as they near his apartment, he leans toward the plexiglass and says to the driver, in Bengali, 'It's that one, up on the right.' The driver turns around, surprised, smiling. 'I didn't realize,' he says. 'That's okay,' Gogol says, reaching for his wallet. He tips the driver excessively and steps out of the car.

Books come to stand for various episodes in our lives, for certain idealisms, follies of belief, moments of love. Along the way they accumulate our marks, our stains, our innocent abuses—they come to wear our experience of them on their covers and bindings like wrinkles on our skin.

And for the first time in his life, another man's name upset Gogol more than his own.

All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.

My work is more important than I am. I'm just some guy.

James Joyce wrote the definitive work about Dublin while he was living in Switzerland. We're all where we come from. We all have our roots.

I love having played Walter because I suppose any actor brings a certain aspect of their own personality to their work, and I had a fairly broad canvas to paint on with the different versions.

Never name it after yourself. Maybe we'll throw a with in there. That seems to work. Like Late Show With David Letterman.

The more I work in fashion, the less I dress up. The first pair of jeans I made was for my own body-my "strange body," as I call it.

My work is an exploration of the self. I've always been concerned with how I'm living and how that reflects in the painting.

My work has no theme. I don't care if my photographs get published, and I have no interest in the news. But the invasion of Prague was not news, it was my life.

Fortunately and unfortunately, people don't see me as a character actor. They see me as a leading man or nothing, which makes it really hard to get work.