Quotes About Identity

Las afinidades son moneda antigua: falsas señas de identidad del deseo: nunca en ningún lugar un deseo fue igual a otro.

Some of them were confused and angry, but given the same circumstances, I was convinced that I would have turned out just like them. It was the difference in where we were born, and to whom, that separated us---not the difference of who we were.

The common denominator all Latinos have is that we want some respect. That's what we're all fighting for.

My father had been buried for a month when my mother came back to claim me. She returned as somebody even I didn't recognize—a spirit barely alive imprisoned in her body, a husk. When we returned home, I mourned as much for the loss of my mother as I did for my father. Even then her shoulders had started to slump in surrender. Her skin had begun to wrinkle.

But some of us have moved away and they are the ones who miss this street the most. They will always belong here even when they think they no longer do.

On Water Street, every person has at least two stories to tell. One story that the light of day shines on; the other that lives only in the pitch black of night, the kind of story carried beneath the breastbone, near the heart, for safekeeping.

It's alright. It's okay if it's about your ego. Sometimes it's got to be about your ego. Just know that it is.

People don't change that much. Instead of trying to put in what God left out, try drawing out what God left in!

Brand is how others see you, culture is how you see yourself.

Eighty percent of all cultures are the same, it is the 20% that make a culture unique and slam dunks the brand promise to the customer.

Some people think we don't have the rightTo say it's my countryBefore they give in they'd rather fuss and fightThan say it's my countryI've paid three hundred years or moreOf slave-driving sweat and welts on my backThis is my country

The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.

The seduction of whiteness and privilege is powerful. Whites can always return to a life of privilege.

Reconciliation is often assumed to mean white institutions adding or including persons of color but never transforming the central identity from white (and male) to a truly inclusive human identity.

I would've liked to have been Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time.

I absolutely refuse to reveal my age. What am I - a car?

Beneath the surface there is a deeper and vastly more authentic Self, but its presence is usually veiled by the clamor of the smaller "I" with its

The other reason why the mind has been regarded with a certain amount of suspicion is its tendency to pull us into a smaller, mentally constructed sense of ourselves: to confuse being with thinking.

Everyone's always on the hunt for a mirror. It's basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others. Others—your sister, your parents—they want to look at you and see themselves. They want you to be a flattering reflection of them—and vice-versa. It's normal. I suppose it's really normal if you're a twin. But being somebody else's mirror? That is not your job." Nora

True patriotism, Jack believed, would have been for his fellow Americans to look inward after 9/11 and accept a little blame, admit the attacks had happened, in part, because of who they were in the world, not in spite of it.

It's not your job to be anyone's mirror.

Everyone's always on the hunt for a mirror. It's basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others.

Being somebody's looking glass is not your job.

True patriotism, Jack believed, would have been for his fellow Americans to look inward after 9/11 and accept a little blame, admit the attacks had happened, in part, because of who they were in the world, not in spite of it. But no. Suddenly at every public function his previously godless neighbors would stand with hands on heart to earnestly intone the Pledge of Allegiance and sing "God Bless America.