Quotes About Identity

Winny had learned from books... you had to be tested in life to discover who you were and what you were capable of doing. Hopeless sissy, noble warrior, maniac - he could be anything, and he wouldn't know until he was tested. One thing he could never be was Santa Claus. Nobody could be Santa Claus. Santa Claus wasn't real like the FedEx guy.

How have you kept yourself as yourself all these years? 'Books,' the boy said. 'Thousands of books.' 'They must have been the right books.' 'Some were, some weren't. You figure out which are which.' 'How do you figure it out?' 'At first by how you feel.' 'And later?' 'By reading what's there on the page and also what's not.' 'Between the lines,' she said. 'Under the lines,' he said. -Annamaria and Timothy -Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 328 chapter 49

When I noticed that some of the gray-haired ladies had tears in their eyes, I understood for the first time why music matters so much, how it reminds us of who we are and where we came from, of all the good times and the sadness, too.

Be you and only you, which means be you and all the people you have loved...

People existed, however, who believed that closet racist were everywhere around them. They needed to believe this in order to have prupose and meaning in their lives, and to have someone to hate.

We have within us the ability to change for the better and to find dignity as individuals rather than as drones in one mass movement or another. We have the ability to love, the need to be loved, and the willingness to put our own lives on the line to protect those we love

Eventually he understood that he was crying for himself. He was ashamed of the man whom he had become, mourning the man whom he had expected to be when he'd been a boy.

Anyway," he said, "if somebody doesn't belong in the world, there's no door they can throw him out. They can't take the world away from him and put him somewhere different. The worst thing they can do is kill him. That's all.

Regardless of what our Creator intended us to be, what we have become is what we are.

At fifty-one, why would she choose to dispose of her house, uproot herself, and come here to be a part of your work if she didn't feel that, for the first time in her life, she was profoundly known for who she is, that she was at last cherished for who she truly is?

And because it was so wonderful, I slipped back down into that dream of dogs and children and beautiful people who met my eyes and knew me in full, knew me and did not reject me.

I am my own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my fundamental humanity.

The way Winny saw it, the best thing and the worst thing were the same thing: nothing lasted ... what to say and felt you didn't belong anywhere, books were a way to lead another life, a way to be someone else entirely, to be anyone at all.

Were you always such a snake, the child asked, or did you grow into what you are?

You've always been stone solid until now, like Joe Friday with no Y chromosome. Now you're Nancy Drew on a sugar rush.

each of us has his or her role in life, and if we know ourselves well enough to understand what that role is, we will be happy doing nothing else but what we can do best.

Maybe it's that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don't see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren't there.

think much about girls. Considering my long, pale face and hound-dog eyes behind black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses, maybe I already knew that even through adulthood

When I function in only one mode or the other, I am denying half myself, half my potential.

The uniqueness of every soul is not a theme that our current culture, obsessed with group identities, cares to assert.

Be of the world and in the world and above the world all at once. Be you and only you

I'm not unique, Chyna. The world is filled with the likes of me – most are just less free. You know where I think a lot of my type wind up?' In spite of herself, she asked, 'Where?' 'In politics.

She was my sister, beloved, who had stayed in my room around the clock when I'd been eight and suffered with a case of the flu that nearly killed me. She was my sister, whose clarinet playing inspired me to find the music in me, to settle on the saxophone, which had fast become the key to my identity. I loved her as I loved no one else, as no others had allowed me to love them, and if I were to kill her under the influence of some malign spirit, I might as well then kill myself.

The uniqueness of every soul is not a theme that our current culture, obsessed with group identities, cares to assert. But Henry was himself and no one else, and judging by