Quotes About Identity

Boy, she told Louie, don't you let nobody tell you who you can't be.

kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through. *

Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?

Maybe who we were in the past informed who we chose to be in the future.

There are nonbinary people, or enbys, who see gender as a spectrum—which it is—and want to express themselves anywhere along that spectrum as an act of freedom. Sometimes people call that genderfucking or genderqueer.

People you love can surprise you every day. That maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable when we least expect it.

It struck Lacy that she didn't really know what color a chameleon was before it started changing.

This is true of anyone: the music we choose is a clear reflection of who we really are.

I didn't want to be treated like him," Josie said, answering her mother, when what she really meant was, I wasn't brave enough.

Home is the place where you know where the silverware lives, where the cups hide, where the clean plates go.

Do you have kids? Anna asks. I laugh. What do you think? It's probably a good thing, she admits. No offense, but you don't exactly look like a parent. That fascinates me. What do parents look like? She seems to think about this. You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that.

At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you became as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away from this, rolled their eyes and smirked this too shall pass - as if adolescence was a disease like chicken pox, something that everyone recalled as a mild nuisance, completely forgettingone how painful it had been at the time.

It makes me wonder how I'd be treated if I were like everyone else. Maybe I'm a pretty rotten person, not that anyone would ever have the guts to tell me this to my face. Maybe everyone thinks I'm rude or ugly or stupid but they have to be nice because it could be the circumstances of my life that make me that way.

Like Daniel, Jason had learned the hard way that we are never the people we think we are.

The feeling that she was going to explode, that she was too big for her own skin.

If you don't know where you've come from, how in Heaven's name will you ever figure out where you're going?

I started to wonder what it might have felt like to live your life in a place someone else had carved.

heady rush to be the object of someone's attention in a good way, not as a freak, that I keep forgetting to hide.

She had pictured suicide as a final statement, a fuck you to the people who hadn't understood how hard it was for her to be the Josie they wanted her to be.

you have to find that rare someone for whom you're not putting on a show. Someone who shines a spotlight in your direction--not because you're who they need you to be, or who they want you to be...just because you're you.

I usually avoided looking at my wrist, at my scars, but this time, I focused on them and realized my body was more than something I was trapped in. I saw a strong backbone, a big heart

You can take the pink hair dye out of the girl, but you never lose those roots. I took another sip of the martini. You don't know me. At the end of the bar, the other customer lifted his face to Peter Jennings and smiled. Maybe, Seven said, but neither do you.

You're not hiding, but you're sitting in a gay bar at dinnertime. You're not hiding, but you're wearing that suit like it's armor.

It's just how she is made, and if that isn't everyone's standard of perfect, then maybe they just have to revise their damn standard.