Quotes About Identity

the development of a sense of self.

Working primarily to please others and to gain their approval takes time and energy away from children's real job of figuring out their authentic talents, skills, and interests.

clear that she and her daughter were two separate people with very different life experiences, decide how much of her history to share with her daughter, and, finally, commit to changing her own behavior.

Temperament has been shown to be extremely stable over the course of our lives. 10 This can be hard to appreciate when our kids are in the middle of this period of intense exploration and when change and heightened self-consciousness seem to be their perpetual companions.

Money buys many things, but typically not a sense of either authenticity or meaning.

Adolescents need tremendous support as they go about the task of figuring out their identities, their future selves. Too often what they get is intrusion. Intrusion and support are two fundamentally different processes: support is about the needs of the child, intrusion is about the needs of the parent.

He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?

But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure not to dishonor me." "I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.

We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.

Most men do not know me for what I am." "Most men in my experience are fools," he said.

Who was he if not destined for fame?

Transformation touched only bodies, not minds.

Have you no more memories?' I am made of memories. The memories come, and come. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.

With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. He shook his head. "How would I know myself?

I found a new thought in myself. I am embarrassed to tell it, so rudimentary it seems, like an infant's discovery that her hand is her own. But that is what I was then, an infant. The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me.

I was a golden witch, who had no past at all.

I had walked the earth for a hundred generations, yet I was still a child to myself.