Quotes About Identity

If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master. STRATEGIES

To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys, watch, matches, pencil-case -- all that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about permissively, unequipped for the real contest.

In a world in which the personal is widely believed to be the political, the sheep of toleration soon turns into the wolf that demands acceptance, indeed, admiration.

It was as though, in one moment, he had become a stranger. And I a stranger to myself.

A community is an informally constituted group, larger than the family, within which there is a distinctive pattern of interaction, whose members share a feeling of common identity which may be no more than a simple recognition of friendship, and which possesses its own sub-culture, defining how the members of the community should conduct themselves and behave towards one another during their free time.

Cowardice, thy name is Harriet.

One final note: in this book I say "we" a lot. No matter who you are, you will probably encounter at least one "we" to which your reaction is "not me." And maybe that's true. But that reaction illustrates a theme of the book, which is that the basic American struggle is over who is an insider and who an outsider—who comes within the most fundamental "we": We the People.

I'm too sexy for my cape...

Leah, wake up. Dougal sat on the edge of her bed and patted her shoulder. Mmm, she moaned. What is it,Howard? Howard? Are ye dreaming of Howard? Her eyes flickered open. Dougal? Aye, 'tis me, yer true love, Dougal. She smiled drowsily at him. Yes, that's true.

Harry Yutu. His last name is Eskimo for 'The Claw.

If I'm such a bloody hero, why am I alone?

I doona want to be loved because I'm Undead. No more than ye would want to be rejected for being mortal.

Tell me what you see vanishing and I Will tell you who you are —W. S. Merwin, "For Now

I don't go to school, I don't have parents, I came from the sea to be your husband.

I hate when new parents ask who the baby looks like ! It was born 15 minutes ago it looks like a potato.

Our scars tell stories of who we are and what we did. A person without marks hasn't done anything.

Most destructive of all to black self-esteem has been the ideology of branqueamento or whitening. This theory was dreamed up in the 1920s to stop Brazil becoming a predominantly black country. White immigration from Europe was encouraged to stem the black tide. The black in Brazil will disappear within 70 years, said one congressman in 1923.

For one thing, they did not call themselves Pilgrims (that term was not widely used until about 1840). Nor were they fleeing immediate persecution.

So you can remember everything about your life from the last seven years, but nothing before that? Not now, Carl. There must be something, Carl said, undeterred. I remember fighting the Romans at Masada, he said seriously. He didn't have to see Carl's face to recognise the shock that was there. That was seventy-three A.D ... ? Van Helsing shrugged. You asked.

To naked eye, dear sir, you're whole, but to Elohim's eyes, you're cause to shiver! Have you not yet gleaned your unnatural role? You're not the archer, sir...you're just his quiver!

recognized him right away; the

If a person is measured by the regard they're shown by others, then maybe I'm not a person after all.

he had the wrong constitution for disappearing. Because that was what disappearing would mean, the life of a permanent tourist, soulless, drowning in small talk.

He couldn't die by degrees in a life like that, didn't think he could do it even for a few days, a revulsion that probably sprang from the same part of his character as the violence he'd come to live by.