Quotes About Identity

Lastly, remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: "It ain't what they call you; it's what you answer to.

She stopped feeling like she was nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties. She was making something

Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.

I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of these big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days.

The older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I'm far more moved by authenticity.

I can only assume that she was like all of us—a complicated being, composed of more than one man's impressions.

remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: "It ain't what they call you; it's what you answer to.

She stopped feeling like she was nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties.

There's something about a white gown - setting aside the obnoxious question of virginity - that signals to a man that this day is not like any other day. It shows him that he's been chosen. It means a lot to men, I have learned over the years, to see their brides walking toward them in white. Helps to quiet their insecurities. And you'd be surprised how insecure the men can be.

Not everyone is meant to charge through the world, carrying a spear.

THIS IS ME! MY FATHER WAS A GREATER WARRIOR THAN YOUR FATHER! YOU CANNOT EVEN LIFT MY SPEAR

The thing that you don't understand about yourself, Vivian, is that you're not an interesting person. You are pretty, yes - but that's only because you are young. The prettiness will soon fade...What you are, Vivian, is a type of person. To be more specific, you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of woman.

Dios vive en ti, como vives tu y es exactamente como eres tu

I don't know exactly what I am, but I am curious enough to go find out!

The wise man is always similar to himself.

That's just ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what your ego does. It keeps you feeling separate, keeps you with a sense of duality, tries to convince you that you're flawed and broken and alone instead of whole.

A man can't help where he's born. A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don't make 'em biscuits.

I realize now that I always needed somebody to be infatuated with when I was twenty years old, and it didn't really matter who, apparently. Anybody with more charisma than me would do the trick. I was so unformulated as a human being, so unsteady in myself, that I was constantly grasping for attachment to another person - constantly anchoring myself to someone else's allure.

I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I'm not any of these things, at least not completely. And I'm not Crazy Aunt Liz, either. I'm just a slippery antevasin - betwixt and between - a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new.

The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.

Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself.

we can't just follow Paris for the sake of Paris.

But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with thick, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.