Quotes About Identity

Anna is the only proof I have that I was born into this family. Instead of dropped off on the doorstep by some Bonnie and Clyde couple that ran off into the night. On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong. (Jesse)

I pointed to the wound. It's missing, I said. My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. Yes, she said. But see how much of me is left?

The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there's no right way and wrong way to do it. We're all just wired differently. It's also worth noting that when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he's right or left-handed. After all: does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?

We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.

On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.

The first question she was asked was What do you do? as if that were enough to define you. Nobody ever asked you who you really were, because that changed. You might be a judge or a mother or a dreamer. You might be a loner or a visionary or a pessimist. You might be the victim, and you might be the bully. You could be the parent, and also the child. You might wond one day and heal the next.

if there isn't a them, there can't be an us.

No matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else.

It was a catch-22: If you didn't put the trauma behind you, you couldn't move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.

Loneliness is a mirror, and recognizes itself.

when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?

I know what it's like when the things you believe make you feel like you're on the outside looking in.

On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive - the sum of the parts equal more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart.

How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?

Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins.

Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.

A girl who is thirteen-which is hard, and difficult, and beautiful, and painful, and exhilarating.

there's something nice about knowing that i'm not the only one who doesn't quite fit the part.

In the space between yes and no, there is a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; it's the legroom for the lies you will tell yourself in the future.

Identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through.

maybe there is more to a person than a body and a mind. maybe something else figures into the mix— not a soul, exactly, but a spirit that hints you might one day be greater, stronger than you are now. a promise; a potential.

Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do

a public persona that might be different from what we truly feel inside... everyone wonders if they are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, no matter how old they are. It is an archetypical moral dilemma - Do you act like yourself and risk becoming an outcast?