Quotes About Identity

And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

I don't want to pretend any more. You make me—want to be real.

We were what seemed important then, not some label.

Lydon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.

Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.

I don't know yet what we're called, or if we have a name. I know so little and need to learn so much. I'm many things, detective, and all of them love you.

So, Josh wore the picture of a man he spoke of with reverence, but who had been dead his whole life. I wanted to know about feeling a passion so strong you needed to wear it for the world to see. -Eliza

Takes more than beer in your blood to take the English out of you.

Ce sentiment de n'appartenir à aucun groupe politique, professionnel ou culturel, de n'être liée à aucune communauté idéologique, religieuse ou intellectuelle où il soit possible de se reconnaître en d'autres, des semblables qui puissent entendre et faire entendre un jugement équitable, suivant des règles acceptées par tous, c'est cela qui me manque et me manquera toujours telle que je suis.

Parce que très certainement nous avons toujours connu ce sentiment auquel nous avons donné le nom d'exil. Le sentiment d'être dedans/dehors, d'appartenir sans appartenir.

People in exile are rich -- rich with the accumulated sum of their contradictory identities.

A person who decides, voluntarily, as an adult, unconstrained by outside circumstances, to leave her native land and adopt a hitherto unfamiliar language and culture, has to face the fact that for the rest of her life she will be involved in theatre, imitation, make-believe.

Who am I, in French? I really don't know -- a bit of everything, perhaps.

Deux êtres qui s'aiment n'en font qu'un : lequel ? »

All sorts of behaviour can be inspired by self-hatred. You can become an artist. Commit suicide. Adopt a new name, a new country, a new language. All of the above.

Your childhood stays with you all your life, no matter where you go.

Women are born actresses. They know all about adaptation; it's part of their identity as women.

Literature allows us to cross the borders -- as imaginary as they are indispensable -- which circumscribe and define our selves. Reading, we allow other people to enter us -- and if we make room for them so willingly, it's because we know them already. The novel celebrates our miraculous capacity to recognize others in ourselves, and ourselves in others. Of all the literary genres, the novel is the genre humain.

When you think about it, there's a whole novel behind the voice of a Haitian in Montreal, a German in Paris, a Laotian in Chicago...

So where's the real you? Huh? Let's say you decide to rip away the mask -- what kind of face will be revealed? The problem is that when a human face has spent a number of years beneath a mask, deprived of light and oxygen, it changes. Not only does it age, as all faces do, but it tends to get a bit pallid, flaccid, puffy...

At twenty, with a modicum of discipline and luck, you can invent your own appearance. You're smooth and svelte, silky and shimmery, you make original choices in clothing and hairstyles... 'I'm my own woman now,' you think; 'I don't owe anything to anyone!

Le Neil qui parlait était amnésique. Sa main qui écrivait ne l'était pas. (p.80)

Je voyage, je me cultive, me transforme ! Mon corps est façonné par une nourriture qui n'est pas la vôtre, mon cerveau s'imprègne de lectures qui ne sont pas les vôtres, je me fabrique, je m'éloigne de vous, et vous n'y pouvez rien. Restez en contact si vous le souhaitez mais sachez que, de toute manière, vous m'avez perdue. Chaque fois que vous me reverrez, je serai méconnaissable. Inconnaissable.

All sorts of behaviour can be inspired by self-hatred. You can become an artist. Commit suicide. Adopt a new name, a new country, a new language. All of the above (Romain Gary).