Quotes About Identity

The truths you establish early stay with you. They're written in the journal of who you are—the one you carry around in your pocket like an operating manual for life.

his name possibly handed down through generations like an heirloom—a coin or a favorite piece of jewelry—from long-dead ancestors who possessed no tokens to pass along, save for their names and their stories.

We are His children, each knit together as we should be. We must go by the name our Father has given us. Beloved.

I've been giving them all the control, but when you get right down to it, what should matter is whether or not you can live with who you are." What should matter is whether or not you can live with who you are.

There remained no place in Charleston for a girl of mixed blood like Sarra, nor would such a place exist within his lifetime. Never would tolerance of her be had in polite society. Not abovestairs, and even the women in his mother's kitchen would not permit her company. Some wealthy man would undoubtedly soon take her to mistress, lured by her exotic beauty, yet ashamed of what she was.

Families aren't dictated by geography, or biology, or the chemistry of chromosomes and DNA. There is, in fact, no perfect science to it at all.

Eventually you have to stop letting people define you and start defining yourself. It's a lesson I'm both teaching and learning. Name yourself. Claim yourself. Classroom Constitution, Article Twelve.

What should matter is whether or not you can live with who you are.

The best thing is to know. I always tell 'em, best to be who you is. What you is deep down inside. Ain't no other good way of livin'.

The best thing is to know. I always tell 'em, best to be who you is. What you is deep down inside.

I wonder, sometimes, as we wander that graveyard, what will remain of me someday. Am I creating a legacy that matters, that will last? Will someone stand at my grave one day, wondering who I was?

When we lose our stories, we lose ourselves.

I lean close and whisper, "Even the coloreds, do you think?" In my mind, I hear Maman hiss, Keep them bright eyes down, Miss High-Tone. You might talk like them convent sisters, but you still a colored girl. "Ssshhh, Iola Anne!" Isabelle's lashes flash wide. We both know that I've been passing on this trip.

A Melungeon. She ain't white, she ain't colored, she ain't Injun. Ain't any one a them three kinds would claim her. Ain't just any fool'd take a chance on her, neither. Them Melungeons been hidin' up in these mountains long's anyone can remember. Got a certain look to 'em, like her—dark skin, but not red like a Injun. Black hair, and them cold blue eyes.

Again, I feel the tug-of-war between my own feelings and the hopes and plans my family has always held for me. The plans I always thought I held for myself.

When the mind's been lost from the body, it can't always find the way home.

We all make trade-offs to get what we want. But no matter what you stand to gain, when the thing you're asked to trade is yourself, the price is too high.

She changed the general perception that orphans were damaged goods.

It washes away the last of Rill Foss. Rill Foss is princess of Kingdom Arcadia. The king is gone, and so is the kingdom. Rill Foss has to die with it. I'm May Weathers now.

Aunque la vida nos lleve por diferentes caminos, el corazón siempre recuerda a donde pertenece.

We all make trade-offs to get what we want. But no matter what you stand to gain, when the thing you're asked to trade is yourself, the price is too high." What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

My landlord is blase' about the crisis and hands me a newspaper. It isn't for reading. This evening, I decide, I'm not going to be Cuban. I grab my passport from the closet and make for the nearest hotel bathroom.

I reminded myself that I was, probably, not clairvoyant. Just a salesman. A salesman can speed-read not only the walk, the voice, the clothes, and gestures--all of the loudspeaker announcements of identity and aspiration--but the aura of a customer's need. No one can hide from a good salesman.

Our mothers and fathers can be the most familiar people in the world and total strangers; they have a dark side, like the moon, that's invisible to us as long as we remain locked in the fixed orbit of the parent-child bond.