Quotes About Identity

I'm frightened to look at myself in the mirror because maybe nothing's there.

It's not that I miss my mother. It's just that I miss the idea of what one would be.

You don't look Italian," I tell him. "Half." "Which half?" He thinks for a moment, and I see a ghost of a smile appear on his face. "The pigheaded side." "I thought you said you were only half Italian?" He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he's regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine.

A tradition that we'll never let go. A tradition that I probably will never let go of either, simply because like religion, culture is nailed into you so deep you can't escape it. No matter how far you run.

A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we're still trying to fit in as ethnics and we're still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians.

Tell me what part of me is stranger to you and I'll destroy that part of me.

I'm a waste of space.

Why do they always have to remember the pathetic stuff? Why can't they ever remember something positive being said about me?

You can't hate what you're part of. What you are. I resent it most of the time, curse it always, but it'll be part of me till the day I die.

I want to be an adjective again. But I'm a noun. A nothing. A nobody. A no one.

Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?

He knew how it felt to be on the perimeter of relationships, to feel as if you'd never quite belong.

We are all children until our fathers die.

But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.

Finally, I asked how you got a boy to like you back. She said, 'Just be yourself,' as though I had any idea who that might be.

I hate weddings,' she says. 'They make me feel so unmarried. Actually, even brushing my teeth makes me feel unmarried.

I feel my heart break to see a nation ripped apart by it's own greatest strength - it's diversity.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family.

When I was a child, I believed that what I want mattered so little that it wasn't even worth me discovering what it might be.

because unlike some, I wasn't in line when they were handling out perfect genes.

After all, what did Prince Charming know about Cinderella besides her shoe size?

Apparently being Cinderella isn't so bad after all.

Apparently, he was too bust living his own life to be a character in the imaginary novel that was mine.

I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.