Quotes About Identity

A person was like a city.

We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.

don't think of me as a sexy vampire

That is what we were like. In a way we argued because we knew it would have no fundamental impact. When you can be yourself around someone, you project your dissatisfied self outward.

She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist.

Too many memories. Too many ghosts. It was time to be someone else again. I suppose the way I understand my life is as a kind of Russian doll, with different versions inside other versions, each one enclosing the other, whereby the life before isn't seen from the outside but is still there.

For all his age and intelligence, Hendrich was fundamentally immature. He was a child. (…) we were just old. And that, in cases such as Hendrich, it didn't really matter how many years (…) had passed, because you were always living within the parameters of your personality. No expanse of time or place could change that. You could never escape yourself.

Foundation Other people matter. But there is no point becoming someone else in order to find friends. In order to find the people who like you, it is first necessary to be you.

Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn't.

After all, I looked like them. Maybe this was another human trait. Their ability to turn on themselves, to ostracize their own kind. If that was the case, it added weight to my mission. It made me understand it better.

She couldn't even manage 'cat owner'. Or 'one-hour-a week piano tutor'. Or 'human capable of conversation'.

The longer you live, the more you realise that nothing is fixed. Everyone will become a refugee if they live long enough. Everyone would realise their nationality means little in the long run. Everyone would see their worldviews challenged and disproved. Everyone would realise that the thing that defines a human being is being a human.

How to be kinder to yourself about yourself Think of people you have loved. Think of the deepest relationships you have ever had. Think of the joy you felt when seeing those people. Think of how that joy had nothing to do with their looks except that they looked like themselves and you were pleased to see them. Be your own friend. Be pleased to recognize the person behind your face.

Don't worry when people don't like you. Not everyone will like you. Better to be disliked for being you, than being liked for being someone else. Life isn't a play. Don't rehearse yourself. Be yourself.

But know this. Men are not from Mars. Women are not from Venus. Do not fall for categories. Everyone is everything. Every ingredient inside a star is inside you, and every personality that ever existed competes in the theater of your mind for the main role.

As she switched to freestyle she realised it wasn't her fault that her parents had never been able to love her the way parents were meant to: without condition.

How do I stay alive for other people if I have no one?" The answer is that you stay alive for other versions of you. For the people you will meet, yes, sure, but also the people you will be.

You are the library card.

the point of life is to give yourself to yourself.

Don't believe in good or bad, or winning and losing, or victory and defeat, or up and down. At your lowest and at your highest, whether you are happy or despairing or calm or angry, there is a kernel of you that stays the same. That is the you that matters.

Happiness is an accident of self-acceptance. It's the warm breeze you feel when you open the door to who you are.

In order to find the people who like you, it is first necessary to be you.

We are the subject in the sentence.

That was the depressing thing about knowing other albas. You realised that we weren't special. We weren't superheroes. We were just old. And that, in cases such as Hendrich, it didn't really matter how many years or decades or centuries had passed, because you were always living within the parameters of your personality. No expanse of time or place could change that. You could never escape yourself.