Quotes About Identity

I always consider myself Syrian. I just happen to be born in Canada.

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.

I am here, a citizen of this country, and I'm saying, 'Hey, the system failed me. I am a good citizen. I contribute to this country, and here I am sharing my story. What are you going to do now?'

If everyone simply ignores the caste system, it will go away overnight.

There's an idea that London is a planet on its own: that it's starting to diverge from the rest of the solar system. We need to combat that.

I love my fans in Pakistan for being so kind and letting me be myself. Along this journey of exploring myself and a new world out here, I'm always going to make them proud, too. They're my constant support system.

I was born and raised in Maryland and attended the public school system.

I remember being a young black kid in high school, I didn't think the establishment or the political system was for me. I didn't think the system was for me, and I know a lot of kids feel that way.

I have been doing this since I was 10 years old. It wasn't like I was an overnight hit. I think when that happens to some actors - they just don't know what to do with themselves. You don't know how to cope with friends and all of a sudden not being able to go out. It's such a shock to your system.

There is a systematic effort to destroy every black male entertainer's image. They want us all to have an asterisk by our name.

Without a national ID and the ability to create true data that can be be safely and securely sent between individuals, we are going to introduce new systemic risk back into the system.

If Asian America exists, it is because of systemic racism.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.

Did you hear what you just said?" I say. "That's exactly where your originality lies. In each bone of your body." I go on to explain the root of originality: origin. Origin, as in source, spring, primary being. We are most original when we are most ourselves. Only then are we close to our first source, our fueling passions. Discovering

What's your favorite book?' is a question that is usually only asked by children and banking identity-verification services--and favorite isn't, anyway, the right word to describe the relationship a reader has with a particularly cherished book. Most serious readers can point to one book that has a place in their life like the one that 'Middlemarch' has in mine.

Books gave us a way to shape ourselves—to form our thoughts and to signal to each other who we were and who we wanted to be.

Reading is often thought of as a form of escapism, and it's a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself...

Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.

You could call a haddock a horse, but woe betide you should you try to saddle it and ride to market.

Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.

Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story, the genealogy, the rights of man, the rule of law. The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.

Who's the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who's horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?

Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.

I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?" -Sherm