Quotes About Identity

Mr Capaldi believed there was nothing special inside Josie that couldn't be continued. He told the Mother he'd searched and searched and found nothing like that. But I believe now he was searching in the wrong place. There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.

What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the paint and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.

As I say, these were helpful lessons for me. Not only had I learnt that changes were a part of Josie, and that I should be ready to accommodate them, I'd begun to understand also, that this wasn't a trait peculiar just to Josie, that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passersby - as they might in a store window, and that such display needn't be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn't be taken so seriously

All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky.

I think I hate Capaldi because deep down I suspect he may be right. That what he claims is true. That science has now proved beyond doubt there's nothing so unique about my daughter, nothing there our modern tools can't excavate, copy, transfer. That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise. A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn't know better.

For some reason, we called it umbrella sex; if you fancied someone your own sex, you were an umbrella.

It might be just some trend that came and went, I said. But for us, it's our life.

My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.

that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn't be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else. Temperament, personality, or outlook don't divide quite like that. The bits don't separate clearly. You end up a funny homogeneous mixture. This is something that will become more common in the latter part of the century—people with mixed cultural backgrounds, and mixed racial backgrounds. That's the way the world is going.

The smart kids think I have no shape. But I do. I'm just keeping it hidden. Because who wants them to see?

I'd begun to understand also that this wasn't a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn't be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

yourself wondering

You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you?

We took away your art because it would reveal you souls or, to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at "creating." Ruth

then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do.

But tell me, Taro, don't you worry at times we might be a little too hasty in following the Americans? I would be the first to agree many of the old ways must now be erased for ever, but don't you think sometimes some good things are being thrown out with the bad? Indeed, sometimes Japan has come to look like a small child learning from a strange adult.

dignity' has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits.

It might be just some trend that came and went,' I said. 'But for us, it's our life.

Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do. You're not like the actors you watch on your videos, you're not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided.

Since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person, there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there, a model getting on with his or her life.

Even so, an AF would feel himself growing lethargic after a few hours away from the Sun, and start to worry there was something wrong with him – that he had some fault unique to him and that if it became known, he'd never find a home.