Quotes About Identity

When most folks think about the problems of growing up in the hood, they think about what it must feel like to be poor, or hungry, or to have your lights cut off. The struggle nobody talk about is what it feel like to be invisible, or to know in your heart the nobody cares. Mama didn't want to be famous, she wanted to be seen.

But what was I but a scared child lost in a strange world? How could I replace all that been lost? Where was my place in the world?

No matter how many times the world had attempted to show me how special I was, I had always remained sure that it was all a hoax, that I really wasn't special after all. That I had nothing to offer.

I killed a guy, maybe two. Possibly three. I have one power. Not two or three or four. Just one. I met a girl, and she changed everything.

If you exclude the people from participation, marginalize them, threaten their identity and nationhood, you will inevitably get sabotage and a conservative response.

In Los Angeles, as I gained and lost celebrity, then gained it again, I often found myself wondering why I, out of thousands like me, had become famous.

Mame Dennis: That's a B. It's the first letter of a seven-letter word that means your father.

He was not a scholar – his brain seemed too sluggish or too dreamy to grasp the things demanded of it – but he was never happier than when left alone among books, and would spend hours turning the pages of atlases, novels or tales from history, alive to the alternative versions of himself they seemed to proffer.

A person is neither whole nor healthy without the memories of photo albums. They are the storybook of our lives. They provide a nostalgic escape from the tormented days of the present.

Soy Abush! ¡Hijo de un millar de reyes de la antigüedad! ¡Heredero de los sagrados montes y valles y de las gloriosas bestias que los habitan! ¿¡Qué derecho tienes a proferir tan arrogantes exigencias!? ¿¡Quién te crees que eres, niño!? -Soy Robin. Hijo de Batman. ¡Y no te hace falta saber nada más!

The more we realize our selves, the less they seem to be our selves, as if the world-soul merely wishes to reflect itself through our eyes. The less self-important we are, the more important we are as selves, with a unique perspective on the cosmos.

We are constantly distilling our selves out of ourselves like fountains that gush from underground wellsprings, flash briefly in the sun, and return to their source.

The unconscious reflects back at us the face we show to it.

Distinctions between Virginians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.

The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I Am Not A Virginian, But An American!

I am not a Virginian, but an American.

I, for one, find it difficult to picture adolescent Jesus looking up suddenly one day from a page of Job or Chronicles and exclaiming, "Wow, what an insight! That really does make sense!" Jesus was not "working out" a religious theory. He was taking possession of his own identity.

Somewhere in the last century, Western man suffered a catastrophic loss of faith—in himself, in his civilization, and in the faith that gave it birth.

this is not the country we grew up in. This is a different country. And given where America is headed morally and culturally, we are not far from a day when traditionalist Catholics will be saying, "This isn't my country anymore.

The death of European Christianity means the disappearance of the European tribe, a prospect visible in the demographic statistics of every Western nation.

Finding an Irish-American in the law enforcement profession is like finding hay in a haystack...

My chin is weak. I find it hard to make decisions. For years I had been caught between the two stools of security on the land and rich-scented life on the exotic islands of literature. I wasn't really a writer. I had seen a strange beautiful light on the hills and that was all.

Parochialism and provincialism are direct opposites. A provincial is always trying to live by other people's loves, but a parochial is self-sufficient.

But, Pat, that's not me. I told you, I loved these guys. I'm not ashamed for being gay. I don't hate gays. I didn't mutilate their bodies. I was careful and precise when I cut into them because I wanted to keep parts of them with me. Mutilation had nothing to do with it. I simply needed a way to dispose of the remains when I was finished.