Quotes About Identity

I've frequently been told things like: "Girl, you've been hanging out with too many white folk" ; "What do you have to be depressed about? If our people could make it through slavery, we can make it through anything" ; "Take your troubles to Jesus, not no damn psychiatrist.

My books are my brain and my heart made visible.

A young homosexual friend recently said, "It's no secret that you, that one, has such-and-such color hair, is yea high, weighs thus and so, and so on, but when you keep one part of yourself secret, that becomes the most important part of you." And that is true, I think; it may be the most important truth of all.

She said that if I ever did produce an autobiography I should call it, Exit, Talking. This

I have yet to meet a Southern woman with two first names that wasn't a man-eater.

I couldn't help thinking, with the required pinch of rue and regret, how different my life would have been if I had been born homosexual in 1950 instead of...But that's a tiresome game, and I'm too old to play it.

Each homosexual must, of course, come out at his own time and in his own way, but homosexuals, the older as well as the younger, the ones in Brooks Brothers suits as well as those in black turtleneck sweaters have, I think, an obligation to declare themselves whenever they decently can.

It has been said that a lot of women of our generation "grew up to be the men they always wanted to marry

We are all persons courtesy of someone else, and since we need others to perceive us in order to experience ourselves, it is very hard to like yourself when those nearest you seem to doubt your worth. And when those around you don't see you as you want to see yourself, it is only too easy to lose the way and start auditioning instead for them.

The image of Eve is not our image of woman.

I longed to stabilize my core identity and to withstand the pressure of other people's words, behaviors, moods, and perceptions. I wanted to be less easily thrown.

in the work of R. D. Laing, who questioned the social construction of mental illness: "Setting the sick apart sustains the fantasy that we are whole." The

Some people know that they are so adorable looking, all they have to do is smile and dress up and they get plenty from that. Then there are some of us who, early on, see that that doesn't work. So we joke about it.

everybody was a lady—the fish lady, the yam lady, the store lady, the teacher lady'.6 She noticed, however, many instances of self-contempt. 'When I was a child,' she said, 'nearly everything about us was bad, you know; they would tell yuh seh yuh have bad hair, that black people bad… and that the language yuh talk was bad. And I know that a lot of people I knew were not bad at all, they were nice people and they talked this language.'7

I am the wilderness lost in man.

I thought Beauty and the Beast were two people, not one.

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.

I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.

But—what if other women decide they want to do what he did? Just stop being women and become men instead? There will be an epidemic. Everyone will want to be a man." I was very quiet. She had just revealed a lot about how she felt as a Mormon woman.

You are who you are, and no one can change that. So be yourself, because no one can do it better.

Depois de tantos anos, deixamos de viver na casa e passamos a ser a casa onde vivemos. - É como se as paredes nos vestissem a alma

O senhor não tem cor, Doutor. As pessoas não têm cores. Ou têm cores que não têm nome.

era preciso deixar de existir para notarem a minha existência.

Existe dois tipos de pretos: os calçados e os pretos.