Quotes About Identity

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.

Amy adored both the new look and the new person it allowed her to be. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. Most people nervously looked away, but on the rare occasions someone would ask what happened, my sister would smile as brightly as possible, saying, 'I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm finally, totally in love, and I feel great.

What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard.

I was a smart-ass, born and raised. This had been my curse and would continue to be so.

She said, "I'm going to have you fired." I had two people say that to me today, "I'm going to have you fired." Go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I'm going to have you fired!" and I wanted to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed.

I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot.

As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.

There's a lot I don't tell my father when he calls asking after Amy. He wouldn't understand that she has no interest in getting married and was, in fact, quite happy to break up with her live-in boyfriend, whom she replaced with an imaginary boyfriend named Ricky. The last time she was asked out by a successful bachelor, Amy hesitated before saying, 'Thanks for asking, but I'm really not into white guys right now.

My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.

My first boyfriend was black as well, but that doesn't prove I'm color-blind, just that I like big butts.

I thought the president-elect's identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on.

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for _who_ I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you for _what_ you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven't got the slightest idea of how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

It means 'female dog,'" I'd explained to my sisters, "but it also means 'a woman who's crabby and won't let you be yourself.

You have how many children in your family? the teacher would ask. I'm guessing you must be Catholic, am I right?

The thing to remeber is that more than anything in this world, these colored people wish they were white.

Use the word "y'all," and before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.

I explained that he was Chinese, and she asked if the movie would be in Chinese. No, I said, he lives in America. In California. He's been there since he was a baby. Then what does it matter if he's Chinese? Well, I said, he's got... you know, a sensibility.

In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings.

I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso.

You're the man now,' she said to me after my father died, 'you're the man.' Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, 'You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat,' as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along.

I might reinvent myself to strangers, but to this day, as far as my family is concerned, I'm still the one most likely to set your house on fire.

the lower bunks, both of us longing to be pinned. "You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern?

The bow tie is like the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party.