Quotes About Identity

The identity badge pinned to Sandrine's white tunic says "Speech Therapist," but it should read "Guardian Angel.

And then one afternoon as I confided my woes to her likeness, an unknown face interposed itself between us. Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil, before I realized it was only mine.

Why do old men grow huge beards as if to proclaim a manhood that has long since fled?

it was not whim or wildness which made me go, but a sudden clear realization that tho you were the first man of importance to me, you could not be the last. — Gwendolyn MacEwen to Milton Acorn, 1963 (age 21)

This skin cripples me. It always has. — Kai Cheng Thom to -----, 2013 (age 22)

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.

As your lover describes you, so you are.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.

Artists are men who want to become inhuman.

If you meet a woman in a burqa, she can't reply to your smile. It's a denial of identity.

The main thing is you and I should exist, and that we should be you and I. Apart from that let everything go as it likes. The best order of things to my way thinking, is the one I was meant to be part of, and to hell with the most perfect of worlds if I am not in it. I would rather exist, even as an impudent argufier, than not exist at all.

Urban Dictionary states: An eGolem is a physical creature born or animated from the sum experience of your social persona.

I'm saying that I'm a moody, insecure, narrow-minded, jealous, borderline homicidal bitch, and I want you to promise me that you're okay with that, because it's who I am, and you're what I need.

That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn't even want them.

When she thinks of this, she feels as tatty as a scrap of lace, defined not so much by what she's made of, but more by the shapes of what's missing.

Lydia has a growing sense that her very humanity is under siege,

También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.

Lydia understands that it's not a disguise at all. She and Luca are actual migrants.

Lydia's English is a help, but there are many different languages in el norte. There are codes Lydia hasn't yet learned to decipher, subtle differences between words that mean almost, but not quite the same thing: migrant, immigrant, illegal alien. She learns that there are flags that people use here, and those flags may be a warning or a welcome. She is learning.

She's aware that she and her companions represent something to these men. They look like home. Or they look like salvation. Or they look like prey. To an halcón they might look like reward money.

She sticks her hand through the fence and wiggles her fingers on the other side. Her fingers are in el norte. She spits through the fence. Only to leave a piece of herself there on American dirt.

From the Author's Note: In my conversations with Mexican people, I seldom heard the word American used to describe a citizen of this country – instead they use a word we don't even have in English estadounidense, United States-ian.