Quotes About Identity

Men's attention and approval were borrowed gifts she was no longer sure she wanted.

Having a name online means no more than it being written on a paper sheet.

Trees have no elsewhere.

And in terms of identity, surely one could argue versions of such a crisis have been with us for a very long time. There is nothing new in exile. It is as ancient as the notion of home.

I am the genuine article, therefore I don't have to try. I just have to be. You, on the other hand, have to try any passing bandwagon, because what else have you got?

But I've always been a sucker for a good double entendre; the gap between what is said and what is thought, what is stated and what is implied, is a place in which I have always found myself. I'm really not a liar, I just learned very early on that those of us deprived of history sometimes need to turn to mythology to feel complete, to belong.(p10)

What I mean is how public people almost eagerly dehumanize themselves. They allow the markings of region, family, class, individual character, and, generally, personhood that they once possessed to be leached away. At the same time, they construct a new public self that often does terrible damage to what remains of the genuine person.

Little parts of my heart break off then, for Finn, for Ruby, for Charlie, for me, for all the ways we've let ourselves become who people think we should be instead of who we really are.

That's what friends do–they remind you of who you are underneath all the stuff people believe about you, all the stuff you believe about yourself.

I frightened myself. I became the ghost Piper was so scared of.

The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance and because I liked how fierce the word looked

When a creature begins to emerge from it's chrysails there is a point at which it is neither one thing nor the other, not quite grown into a new identity nor rid of the old one. It's wings are folded and sticky, it's colours hidden. Whether it will emerge in shades of emerald and lapis lazuli or the colour of mud is yet to be revealed. It is that long, still, moment of waiting that fascinates me utterly. The suspence of waiting for beauty to unfurl.

I wonder at what point a child becomes a person. Does it happen all at once, or slowly, in stages? Is there an age, a week, a moment, at which all the secrets of the universe are revealed and adulthood descends on a cloud from heaven, altering the brain forever? Will the child-me slink off one day, never to return?

La idea de no tener una lengua materna me preocupa. ¿Es como sentirte un nómada dentro de tu propia cabeza? no me puedo imaginar no tener palabras en las que refugiarme. Ser huérfana de lengua.

El olor de su piel es demasiado familiar para describirlo.

And so, perhaps, when I say I long to be a pane of glass, I am lying. I long for partial obscurity at the same time that I long for someone to know me.

He didn't remember ever being less weird than he was right now. In fact, as far as he could tell he had always been more or less exactly as weird as this. if not more so.

Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him.

wonder at what point a child becomes a person. Does it happen all at once, or slowly, in stages? Is there an age, a week, a moment, at which all the secrets of the universe are revealed and adulthood descends on a cloud from heaven, altering the brain forever? Will the child-me slink off one day, never to return?

El olor de su piel es demasiado familiar para descubrirlo.

Al año siguiente, cuando ya no nos hablábamos, pensé que su nueva personalidad realmente tenía sentido, que besar a chicos y fumar marihuana y salir de clase dando fuertes pisotones e insultar a los profesores y básicamente comportarse unas cien veces peor y más escandalosamente de lo que eres en realidad, es lo que hay que hacer para no pensar que tienes que volver a dormir en una casa triste y gris.

Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.

But, she knew, you didn't have to marry your soulmate, and you didn't even have to marry an Interesting. You didn't always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.