Quotes About Identity

Even catholics have hail marys. Jews only have guilt.

The fury began before she was old enough to give it a name. When she arrived at the hospital, dragged through the door into the red era of soul science, her fury was called hysteria, as if it had nothing to do with her, and she became we. and we became the disease that said we wanted to steal, to falsely accuse, to set things on fire. Fine, let it burn.

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?

My parents are there, but they are hazy figures, a tall stern-looking man in khaki shorts with green eyes, and my mother, petite and graceful, wearing a longyi, the Burmese version of the sarong, with a close-fitting jacket or blouse called an eingyi. And there are flowers in her hair, always jasmine.

Sergeant Missouri crouched close to the ground, pulling up his collar against the bitter, gusting winds. Show me, he thought tiredly, I'm from Missouri.

Age is so misleading--you are the same on the inside as ever, only your outsides are different. Or, perhaps you have changed, but it is not like the younger self goes away--you just go on adding layers to the onion. [Édouard Manet]

We are all always the heroes of our stories, or the villains--we never play a bit part. [Édouard Manet]

I'm Keith," he said, "and you're . . . clearly mad, but what's your name?

She was standing in the airport of Copenhagen, staring at a doorway, trying to figure out if it was (a) a bathroom and (b) what kind of bathroom it was. The door merely said H. Was she an H? Was H "hers"? It could just as easily be "his". Or "Helicopter Room: Not a Bathroom at All

CLOTHES SWITCH How would the story change if the characters were dressed differently—preppy, gangsta rapper-style? ETHNIC/RACE SWITCH What if the characters were given different ethnicities or races? How would that change the story? EMOTION SWITCH

Women have to learn where their true source of validation is.

so many women having taken the hero's journey, only to find it personally empty and dangerous for humanity. Women emulated the male heroic journey because there were no other images to emulate;

My heritage has been my grounding, and it has brought me peace.

Life's challenges aren't supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Though the 'Thou' is not an 'It', it is also not "another 'I'". He who treats a person as "another 'I'" does not really see that person but only a projected image of himself. Such a relation, despite the warmest "personal" feeling is really 'I'-'It'.

To name the cat is, if you like, to make it into a non-cat, a cat that has ceased to exist, has ceased to be a living cat, but this does not mean one is making it into a dog, or even a non-dog.

One's thinking about me makes me feel this self; one's not thinking about me leaves me in this self that exceeds me."-"At least disappear in this thought.

Povera camera, sei mai stata abitata? Come fa freddo qui, come ti abito poco. Ci sto forse per cancellare tutte le tracce del mio soggiorno? Di nuovo, di nuovo, camminando e rimanendo sempre qui, un altro paese, altre città, altre strade, lo stesso paese.

worse than amnesia, the loss of all memory. It is the chaotic falsification of memory. Dementia.

No one knew me until I met my wife Lulu. Lulu's mother used to ask, Which one is Maurice? For six months she thought Lulu was dating Barry.

Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments – it may be by merest accident – that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are? …

Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.