Quotes About Identity

There is a spine of goofiness in America that has never been deterred by literacy

How can I be lost when I've never been found?

To the white people, among whom I helplessly number myself, life is a very long and high set of stairs, but to my mother life was a river, a slow and stately wind across the sky, an endless sea of grass.

In fancy Los Angeles hotel rooms there is always an uncomfortable number of mirrors that remind us why we are not movie stars.

How could this nasty twerp be so ferally sexual dressed nearly as a boy?

It's like gender trumps ideas

Strangers, he remembered, can tell you how old you are without trying. The looks you get or don't get let you know exactly where you're at, where you're headed and where you can never go again.

When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are. It's a subtle kind of murder ... the most loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces.

That's what real love amounts to- letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending- performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act

Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.

Nobody would stay interested in me if I was normal

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade for a role, you give up your ability to feel and in exchange put up a mask

No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.

The mask that you wore. My fingers would explore. Costume of control. Excitement soon unfolds.

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.

I knew–though I didn't recognize the fact–that I wasn't all right.

He was part of this river of cars, aiding its sluggish tide and in turn aided by it. Without losing his identity, free to turn out of the tide when he chose, he still belonged to something.

He had never before realized the blessedness of silence - the freedom to be silent, rather, if one chose. He had never realized, somehow, that such blessedness might be his privilege. He was Doc Mc Coy, and Doc Mc Coy was born to the obligation of being one hell of a guy.

A real Irishman will give everything of himself--except that kernel of his soul which makes him a mystery to other peoples.

Identifying with success makes those doing the identifying seem successful themselves. The day United falter, many of these supporters will doubtless take their affiliation with them to Real Madrid or Barcelona or whoever it is that can provide them anew with a vicarious sense of worth.

I think everybody should believe in himself. I suppose, in a way, that's also believing in God. If there is a God and He made you, then believing in yourself is also believing in Him. Once you carry God inside yourself, then you're part of Him.

When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere.

Shoelaces are the first way society ties up the individual.

Thank you 'adults who wear back packs' for letting me know that I don't have to take you seriously