Quotes About Identity

You think you have a memory; but it has you! Later

David Copperfield.

That's why I hate them. They force you to be like them—or else you're their enemy.

Durante un período terrible de la vida, el adolescente se defrauda a sí mismo y cree que puede engañar al mundo entero. Está convencido de que es invulnerable.

Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to move to the United States. I

It's a good job to lose!" Jack called after them, but they kept walking. He was so bad as Melody, even Wild Bill Vanvleck would have made him repeat the line. The point was—he wasn't acting. It was as if he'd forgotten how! Jack still knew his lines, but he was out of character. He had a sister, and he loved her; she'd said she loved him, too. Jack had stopped acting. He was just Jack Burns—the real Jack Burns at last.

In this dirty-minded world, she thought, you are either somebody's wife or somebody's whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. If you don't fit either category, then everyone tries to make you think there is something wrong with you.

Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

even if my father never came forth to identify himself, Owen told me, God would identify him for me. "YOUR DAD CAN HIDE FROM YOU

Reality, for orphans, is so often outdistanced by their ideals

In this world," Franny once observed, "just when you're trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that they've met you.

He had a body like coat hangers - the perfect body to hang clothes on. Stripped, he had barely a body at all.

Er Schrieb an Helen, dass Jungsein zum Teil auch aus dem Gefühl besteht, dass es niemanden gibt, der dir genug ähnelt um dich zu verstehen

Don't you see, Johnny? If he could, he would cut off his hands for you—that's how it makes him feel, to have touched that baseball bat, to have swung that bat with those results. It's how we all feel—you and me and Owen. We've lost a part of ourselves.

My becoming a Canadian citizen was part of the plot.

we tend to think that if you don't know where you're going, you don't belong where you are.

But I tried to feel I was part of the demonstration; sadly, I didn't feel I was a part of it—I didn't feel I was part of anything. I had a 4-F deferment; I would never have to go to war, or to Canada. By the simple act of removing the first two joints of my right index finger, Owen Meany had enabled me to feel completely detached from my generation.

Everyone has a history, Jack.

but when I look at you now, I don't know who you are." I told her I occasionally had the same feeling about myself.

So that's what it means to be a nonpracticing homosexual, I thought: it means I don't know what I am!

The autobiography part isn't what matters," I began, before I got bogged down in all the amalgams. The

After twenty years in Canada, there are certain American lunatics who still fascinate me.

In this dirty-minded world," Jenny wrote, "you are either somebody's wife or somebody's whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other.

Quite understandably, as a Jew, Noah felt that German was the language of his people's executioners and he refused to learn a word of it.)