Quotes About Identity

She was no more mine than the trees were mine. No more mine than the sun. And with this realization I knew that I could never be separate from her, any more than I could ever be separate from the trees or from the sun.

Everything you've longed for "out there" is already within you. The path to authenticity travels through your own heart, mind, body, and spirit.

Our search for a God who looks like us begins in our own lives. She will be found there.

I want to be remembered in my overalls," said Aunt Lou. "You will," said Grandfather. "Believe me, you will." Mama and William laughed. "That's how we think of you," said William. "You see me every day," Aunt Lou said to William. "You don't have to remember me.

William stopped in front of me. "Cassie," he said softly. "How do you know?" I asked. "You must be Cassie. You look just like your mama did when she was your age." "Really?" "Really. She even had braids like you." William reached out and touched my hair. "Did you tease her?" I asked. "Of course," said William. "It was my job.

That night Aunt Mattie gave me a box wrapped in bright paper. "What is it?" I asked. "Open it," she said. "I made it for you. There's so much fuss for Anna that I was afraid you'd get lost." Caleb put his arm around me. "Cassie? Cassie's never lost. Except maybe in her head," he said.

Beatrice," said Grandfather softly. "Don't really see how Beatrice can have a name when her mother doesn't have one." "I think her name is Beatrice's Mother," said Mama. "What kind of a name is that?" asked Grandfather. "It's what we've got," said Mama with a smile.

But sometimes, I hate myself for hating him. Simply because he is an ordinary boy.

I nod yes-no-yes-no and run back to Ama, afraid to tell her about this new auntie who smells of amber and jasmine and possibility.

I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me.

You do not need outside approval. You came into this life pre-approved!

There's three things I've seen in this world that seem to make a body happy or miserable. It's no money or health or any of those other things most people talk about. It's knowing where you fit in this world, being able to go after your dreams, and love.

There's three things I've seen in this world that seem to make a body happy or miserable. It's not money or health or any of those other things most people talk about. It's knowing where you fit in this world, being able to go after your dreams and love.

It doesn't matter that nobody sees your face or knows your name, my wide eyed child, my father said to me. You know it. You be it. You are.

You're Joe Spain's beautiful daughter. That's why you came back home- to finally discover every part of that truth.

if she'd had a tough time trying to live life as the Colored Professor. Annalee knew that in this uniform, she would simply disappear. her identity would blur and fade, then - poof- disintegrate. No wonder Benita acted so angry. In these clothes, people don't even see her.

Demagoguery is about identity. It says that complicated policy issues can be reduced to a binary of us (good) versus them (bad). It says that good people recognize there is a bad situation, and bad people don't; therefore, to determine what policy agenda is the best, it says we should think entirely in terms of who is like us and who isn't.

Arguments for slavery weren't pragmatic or ethical discussions about the realities of slavery; they were assertions about abstract identities (The Slave, The Slave Owner, The Abolitionist) and performances of loyalty to the South. They were demagoguery.

Languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. A language dies every 14 days.

to answer . . . is, 'What does a woman want?' Sigmund

A whole people's tumble into raw, untested century began with one man, penning his serpentine sojourn up from slavery-- I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but ... I must have been born somewhere and at some time. He began as another baby shoved directly into the wrong air.

What you do and what you are gradually become the same thing, and are identical when you die. And what you have done to another person becomes a part of your substance as surely as a fruit you have eaten.

She had thought because he loved her body that he cherished it. But now she saw that he took her body to be a dream of his own. It gave him pleasure, it gave him work, it gave him comfort, and profit. It was even more completely his body than his own, since if he needed to, he could discard it. Nothing she had imagined about who she was to him was true. At that moment, she became his widow.

Always work hard, be honest, and be proud of who you are.