Quotes About Identity

Wick never believed he was a person, was continually being undone by that. Borne was always trying to be a person because I wanted him to be one, because he thought that was right. We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means

What was a person but someone who turned monstrous, anyway? What was a person, in Moss's experience, but a kind of demon.

You can tell about people by their absences. By the shape of the emptiness they leave behind.

What does she think it feels like, having everybody telling you you're strange, you're different, you don't go along with the crowd, you don't play what we like to play, you don't think what we think, what's wrong with you? As if it never occurs to them that there might be something wrong with them. It feels like claws ripping you to pieces. And if you don't believe you can rise from the fire, then you'll just shrivel up and die inside

The boy in war is, to an extent found in almost no other form of work, inextricably bound up with the men and materials of his labor. … He is a fragment of American earth wedged into an open hillside in Korea and reworked by its unbearable sun and rain. … He is a light brown vessel of red Australian blood that will soon be opened and emptied across the rocks and ridges of Gallipoli from which he can never again become distinguishable.

Without parental grounding, she lacks the help she requires to process her intense emotional responses or the distorted versions of her idealized self. Stalled on the threshold of selfhood, the psyche of the child becomes increasingly preoccupied with her external self.

Maybe, thought Maddie, remembering what had happened next, maybe she figured all she'd have to do was say something and she'd really be one of the girls. And this would be an easy thing to do because all they were doing was talking about dresses.

La desdicha, como el dolor físico, iguala los minutos. Los días se convierten en el mismo día, los actos en el mismo acto y las personas en un sólo personaje inútil.

Estoy y estuve en muchos ojos. Yo solo soy memoria y la memoria que de mí se tenga.

Cada seis años la Patria cambia de apellido

Luchaba entre varias memorias y la memoria de lo sucedido era la única irreal para él. De

se dijo con tristeza; el muerto era un yo descalzo

mis gentes.

qué mundo es este en que los migrantes, al verse imposibilitados para mínimamente sobrevivir, pierden su condición de humanos, adultos, racionales?

los hombres que pasen por aquí no tengan ni memoria de que fui Ixtepec.

Niña, ya no te contemples más en el espejo!", le ordenaban los mayores cuando era pequeña; pero no podía impedirlo: su propia imagen era la manera de reconocer al mundo.

The real challenge is not simply to survive. Hell, anyone can do that. It's to survive as yourself, undiminished.

I am not a cosmic orphan.

The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always something, and if for once I am something, I pay for it by being nothing for months on end.' —Kafka, quoted by Canetti

Del azar de lo leído depende lo que eres

Um Livreiro pode ser um Rei, mas um Rei jamais será um Livreiro.

Vom Zufall des Gelesenen hängt es ab, was du bist.

The Englishman likes to imagine himself at sea, the German in a forest. It is impossible to express the difference of their national feeling more concisely.

I've nothing, am nothing, shall be nothing, and yet I take nothing.