Quotes About Identity

On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.

Maybe that's what living in America does to you: it spreads you into far distances until you're just little bits rolling apart.

sometimes … sometimes you have to tell them who you are. What you really think. You have to make them see us.

When we came to America, though, we didn't know what the right thing was.

Better I am poor in a country where I can feel at home. Where I am wanted, than to live like this.

Honey, your uncle don't even have his papers right. What kind of liberties you think he has?" Aisha

One day she'll exist on paper in this country. She can sit on buses and take classes and get a job and never again feel that churning in her stomach if someone asks for ID.

In high school everyone thought I was kind of a freak. 'Rock Girl,' they'd call me. But around here people think it's okay. That's what's so cool about college, you know? You have a million kids doing all kinds of weird things here.

Let them peck like old chickens," Abba laughed. "We know who we are.

I hear Mrs. Roble say, "You know, I've seen this happen before with the Muslim kids. I push those girls—they're so bright. Then one day they come in with a head scarf, and they say their marriage has been arranged and they're not going to college after all.

Only the image of my father is unclear, as if something obscure but vital has been blotted out, and only the raging surface is left. Who is he, this man whom I have known and not known all my life?

Ukraina: he sighs, breathing in the remembered scent of mown hay and cherry blossom. But I catch the distinct synthetic whiff of New Russia. Her

Although I had long since stopped regarding myself as a Christian, I still thought of Christians as being basically decent, tolerant easy-going types like myself, while Muslims I'd always thought of as, well, let's say a bit prone to fundamentalism.

Moving to America felt as splitting and eternal as death.

You can't love a city if you have no memories burried there.

We all share the right to create our own savage, as Glifford Geertz has remarked [ Out of the Garden ].

Somebody had written: MEN, which was crossed out and replaced with LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR A PENIS. Under that, the word WOMEN had also been crossed out and replaced with VAGINAL AMERICANS.

I thought you were Mexican." "If you're Mexican, you're part Indian. And part Spaniard. Part eagle. Dog. Snake. Parts from whatever no one else wants." Coyote

Usted no tiene que convertirse en nadie diferente a quien ya es, porque, en su esencia, usted ya es perfecto, esto es, completo. Lo único que tal vez necesite es descubrir qué hay realmente detrás de las palabras YO SOY.

Es fácil deducir que, si me veo de una manera, todas las conductas, todas las acciones que emprenda tendrán mucha relación con la forma en la que me veo a mí mismo.

La búsqueda de uno mismo, de quien se es en realidad, es siempre un acto de heroicidad que implica aprender a superarse a sí mismo una y otra vez, para poco a poco ir expandiendo los límites de la propia identidad.

En el hecho de identificarnos completamente con nuestra forma y no con nuestra esencia está la raíz de todos los problemas y el origen del sufrimiento. A esto es a lo que denominamos ego, la creencia en que estamos separados del universo y de la propia Vida.

La felicidad es el resultado de conectar con eso que somos y descubrir que nuestra esencia no es material sino espiritual, y que por consiguiente es también inmortal. Por eso no solo tenemos Vida, sino que, y esto es lo esencial, también somos Vida.

When I wasn't famous, I had a lot of friends, almost all of them Italian. The racism only started when I started to play football.