Quotes About Identity

They took us all to Arcata to the church there. Then they made us all separate. They said we were going to have new Christian American families. They said…they said you were all dead. I believed them at first, and I didn't know what to do. But then I saw how they would lie whenever they felt like it. They would say things about us and about Acorn that were nothing but lies. Then I didn't know what to believe.

WE ARE EARTHSEED. WE are flesh—self aware, questing, problem-solving flesh.

Sometimes she sounded as though she'd never left, and sometimes she sounded as though she'd never been near any part of the south. She seemed to be able to turn the accent on and off. She tended to turn it on for comforting people, and for threatening to kill them.

People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.

When I meet a woman who attracts me, I prefer women,' she said. 'And when I meet a man who attracts me, I prefer men.' 'You mean you haven't made up your mind yet.' 'I mean exactly what I said. I told you you wouldn't like it. Most people who ask want me definitely on one side or the other.

Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.

Ser uno mismo es, siempre, llegar a ser ese otro que somos y que llevamos escondido en nuestro interior, más que nada como promesa o posibilidad de ser.

a human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.

Dime cómo mueres y te diré quien eres.

But every baby is an anchor for young parents navigating the stormy waters of daily life; every baby is an anchor for those who are looking for their true north, their purpose, their identity. We give our parents hope when they drift from bad times to bad times to worse.

No one can dub you with dignity. That's yours to claim.

Hark to the sky of a seagull! He cries because he's not an eagle. Oh, what if you were you silly he-gull? What would you say to your she-gull?

Most people have some idea that they're leaving traces of themselves whenever they go online, but very few realize how much. Even fewer people know how much all these digital footprints can tell others about their lives.

Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days of slavery?

But, after all, we see only our own image in the universe-- our particular idiosyncrasies dictate the mode of our perceptions.

The art of today is that which really belongs to us: it is our own reflection. In condemning it we but condemn ourselves.

Olympic Gold changed me and my life dramatically. I became a celebrity overnight and people see me as a famous skater, not a real person.

that the Ukrainian choice is a choice between nonexistence and an existence that kills you, and that all of our hapless literature is merely a cry of someone pinned down by a beam in a building after an earthquake—I'm here! I'm still alive!—but, unfortunately, the rescue teams are taking their time and on your own—how the hell are you supposed to get out?

we did not actually warm ourselves with vodka in the cold weather, and remained strictly alcohol-free for the entire three weeks of standing in the streets (that's what made it clear to these folks that we were different from Russians);

Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government.

Two disembodied minds, occupying the same visual position, possessing the same memories and desires, and often performing the same mental acts at the same time, can scarcely be conceived as distinct beings. Yet, strangely enough, this growing identity was complicated by an increasingly intense mutual realization and comradeship.

An image of an image, which is a perfect place to live if you want to be something other than what you once were.

Sometimes it's as if I'm composed of nothing but symptoms of illness, I am a phantom built out of pain.

I believe, unswervingly, agonizingly, that it is in freaks that Being breaks through to the surface and reveals its true nature.