Quotes About Identity

That people were manifold creatures didn't come as a surprise to the Swede, even if it was a bit of a shock to realize it anew when someone let you down. What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for.

So I said, and quickly reached for my glass so as to duck my disingenuous face and take a bitter drop of brandy on my tongue. But Lonoff had read my designing mind, all right; for when I came upon Babel's description of the Jewish writer as a man with autumn in his heart and spectacles on his nose, I had been inspired to add, "and blood in his penis," and had then recorded the words like a challenge—a flaming Dedalian formula to ignite my soul's smithy.

I'll take your case, son. I believe in your innocence no less than my own." "Thanks, man. You a lawyer?" "No, a Hindu. And you?" "I'm Jewish. But I studied Buddhism.

The perfect couple: she puts the id back in Yid, I put the oy back in goy.

But now, except for a county in Alabama where the citizens voted no on a referendum, I believe the poor goy cannot elude the bagel anywhere in America.

It's not your fault that you don't know what Gentiles think when they read something like this.

I wonder if you fully understand just how very little love there is in this world for Jewish people. I don't mean in Germany, either, under the Nazis. I mean in run-of-the-mill Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Nice Guy, who otherwise you and I consider perfectly harmless. Nathan, it is there. I guarantee you it is there. I know it is there. I have seen

Chaque fois que je levais les yeux je voyais mon petit ami complètement gaga parce que j'étais une reine de beauté à la noix! T'étais un vrai gosse! Il a fallu que tu me transformes en princesse! Eh ben, regarde où ça m'a menée. A l'asile! Elle chez les dingues, ta princesse!

You know what he did for a living before the war? Sold champagne. A liquor salesman, Sandy. A fake—a plutocrat and a thief and a fake. Even the 'von' in his name is a fake.

Sabbath had the power, and he knew it, of being no one with anything much to lose.

It's never been easy to say what you really are, Mickey." "Oh, failure will do." "But at what?" "Failure at failing, for one.

Pyorrhea. Gingivitis. Swollen gums. One schmutzig mouth after another. Schmutz is her métier.

Jews have a reputation for being intelligent, and they are intelligent. The only place I have ever been where all the Jews are stupid is Israel.

Calm." "If Yahweh wanted me to be calm, he would have made me a goy. Four days. No. Now." "We can't," she whispered. "Come Saturday—I'll give you a periodontal probe.

You don't have to revere your family, you don't have to revere your country, you don't have to revere where you live, but you have to know you have them, you have to know that you are part of them. Because if you don't, you are just out there on your own and I feel for you.

The outrage, the disgust inspired in my parents by the gentiles, was beginning to make some sense: the goyim pretended to be something special, while we were actually their moral superiors. And what made us superior was precisely the hatred and the disrespect they lavished so willingly upon us! Only what about the hatred we lavished upon them?

that the Jews were victims before they were conquerors and that they are conquerors only because they are victims.

When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror, to somehow console them in their grief, was, "At least he didn't leave you with a shikse wife. At least he didn't leave you with goyische children." End of Heshie and his story.

Mishima. Rothko. Hemingway. Berryman. Koestler. Pavese. Kosinski. Arshile Gorky. Primo Levi. Hart Crane. Walter Benjamin. Peerless bunch. Nothing dishonorable signing on there.

the me who's not me encamped boldly in Jewish Jerusalem while I go underground with the Arabs.

in truth nothing lives in me life my life.

in truth nothing lives in me like my life.

It had cost him dearly to clear a space where he could exist in the world as antagonistically as he liked.

Jewish resentment could be just as bad as the Irish resentment.