Quotes About Identity

Hild unpinned her sleeves to show arms tan and tight as a stripling's wore a light cloak in royal blue flung back from her shoulder gesith-style, and tucked her hair behind her ears, to remind them of fighting man with greased-back hair

Gwaldus tugged at her collar again. She looked nothing like Hereswith. She was at least two years older, half a hand shorter. Her eyes were grey-green, and her hair would be paler when washed. Her whole body would be paler. Her nipples were more pink than red.

The way my parents see me, more Crip than Kick, I saw I've been doing that to myself. Cutting myself down to size before anyone else could do it." "Protecting yourself." "Making myself small.

She was baptised to Christ-their name for the pattern, her path, her wyrd. She was still herself.

I can't tell you what is right," she said, "but I can tell you what is expected by others, and by this child. It doesn't matter what she calls you. Mom or Tante or Aud, if legally you are her mother, somewhere inside she will expect you to behave as one. It doesn't matter if this is likely, or even possible, it is what she will expect.

It was a good place, a fine place, it should have been her place to belong. Only it was not; Arturus did not want her.

You can never walk away. They'll always find you. You matter for your blood. And your mind." "Which you made." "To keep you safe.

When a time came to carve her name, would it be Dawnged, girl of Ystrad, T´ywi or Tâl, payment to Elen, or would she one day find her true name?

My face looked like a picture of someone else. I turned this way and that. No, more like a picture of a rock after some vandal has ripped off its decades-old layer of moss and soil, and the bare stone is revealed.

She looked nothing like that young wife, and nothing like the men with hair on their faces. Her mother's hair, almost, but not her eyes.

Hild looked down at her reflection. A tall, obdurate woman gazed back. Blue-green veil band embroidered with gold-and-silver thread, sewn with lapis and agate and beryl. Agate swinging from each ear. Heavy yellow gold resting between her breasts. Dyed-blue girdle. A matching purse with ivory lid.

Perhaps there was no magic for faling off your own mount and dying alone and unmasked.

Not that I'm sure I want to have a child, you know? We've enough to deal with, with Jink's two. But it would be nice to have the choice. It would make me feel as though I belong.

Hild watched them and the other not-yet-girdled girls-Cille and Leofe, who were already meant for each other, and half a dozen younger-and wondered when her mother might choose her gemæcce and who it might be.

She stood alone at the empty heart of a gone god, staff in the crook of her arm, one hand on her seax and the other on her cross. She would not wear and weather. She was Yffing. She would be totem and token for her people, the light of the world.

No one knew me; there was no one to compare my behaviour in the shop with my behaviour at other times. I could be fluid and responsible only to myself.

Guns can be a distraction, a dangerous focus of one's authority, a crutch. Many come to depend on them: take away the gun and you take away their identity.

My face is my most useful tool. I made it smile.

Tell my mother: They are my people. They are my path. It's where I belong. She'll understand.

All I have ever wanted is to fight for what is good and clean and bright. All I want is to know who I am and where I belong. And I belong here, lord, as a Companion.

She watched her mother, and Begu, and Gwladus, and felt, for the first time in an age, at home and ordinary.

Most women learned very young to play the roles expected of them. Girls' games were built on the notion: play Mom, play nurse, play teacher. They played and played and played until they learned to inhabit the roles.

They both turned to look at me and I wondered how a person could become the outsider so fast.

You've made more of a life here in three weeks than you've done in five years in Atlanta. I only wonder that you've managed to hide from the obvious for so long. This place is ideal for a Norwegian who isn't really Norwegian anymore. It positively reeks of Scandanavia, all clean and shiny and Americanized full of rules that people obey with a smile when it pleases them and break with a smile when it doesn't. Ideal for you.