Quotes About Identity

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

Greeks are just Jews without money.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready — so who was she to advise me on anything?

I wouldn't know it until months later, but my father had kicked me out of the house not because I was a bum but because I was gay.

Wpasowywanie siÄ™ to nie nasza rzecz. My nie z takich, co siÄ™ wpasowujÄ….

Here was a person for whom the word pen had two syllables. Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready—so who was she to advise me on anything?

Your trash. You're trash. Your family's trash.

Maybe ours wasn't the house I'd have chosen had I been in charge of things. It wasn't as clean as I'd have liked. From the outside, it wasn't remarkable. We had no view, but still it was the place I held in mind, and proudly, when I thought, Home.

She lit a cigarette and spent a moment identifying with the smoldering match.

Hugh and I returned to Normandy the following summer, and I resumed my identity as the village idiot. "See you again yesterday!" I said to the butcher. "Ashtray! Bottleneck!

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape." Is there a richer or more complex story than that?

could it be???? Timothy Speaks, who had so many pierced holes in his ears you could have torn the lobe right off, effortlessly ripped it loose the same way you might separate a stamp from a sheet.

even then that without them, I was nothing. Not a son or a brother but just a boy—and

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

In the end I decided the word was more about him than it was about me. But isn't it often that way? It's one thing for someone to describe you in print, to go through several drafts and, after careful consideration, choose the adjective

Jews in concentration camps had shaved heads and tattoos. You'd think the anti-Semites would go for a different look.

Michael is in a group I've been hearing a lot about lately. White men who, following eight years of a black president, feel forgotten.

My brother politely ma'ams and sirs all strangers but refers to friends and family, his father included, as either "bitch" or "motherfucker.

looked at her picture on Facebook and thought, Of course.

my family's asshole.

When I saw myself through my parents' eyes, I saw a worm crawling through mud and shit toward a psychedelic mushroom, but when I saw myself through hers, I felt that things were possibly not as bad as they seemed.

Usually when I was forced to compete, it was my tactic to simply give up. To try in any way was to announce your ambition, which only made you more vulnerable. The person who wanted to win but failed was a loser, while the person who didn't really care was just a weirdo—a title I had learned to live with.

She offered to have my glasses fixed but drew the line when I asked for a brand-new pair. "But the ones I've got make me look like a bozo." "Well, of course they do," she said. "They're glasses. That's their job.