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09887f1 I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. integrity self-determination independence women freedom self-awareness identity empowerment image realism gender flaws Charlotte Brontë
9378bcc When I discover who I am, I'll be free. independence self-awareness identity self-discovery Ralph Ellison
3e5dec6 Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself. be-yourself individuality self-determination identity life inspirational self-expression self-esteem Harvey Fierstein
18eb1fd He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. identity life self Gabriel García Márquez
5c65487 I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate. integrity men self-determination independence romance women freedom self-awareness identity empowerment love ideal-woman image realism gender flaws Charlotte Brontë
aec3d72 Sleep my little baby-oh Sleep until you waken When you wake you'll see the world If I'm not mistaken... Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure... Face your life Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken. dance sleep pain individuality choice treasure identity life love name pleasure Neil Gaiman
e0f441c All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. individuality identity Nick Hornby
f889a32 "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment." identity inquisitiveness consequence importance William Goldman
f6971cf I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line. thoughts romance identity religion life lesbian Jeanette Winterson
c0cd1f7 "I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself." integrity self-determination independence women freedom self-awareness identity empowerment ideal-woman image realism gender flaws Charlotte Brontë
d5cf384 I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it. pain identity Orson Scott Card
767e7a5 Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all. identity old-friends Bob Dylan
4761a7a A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.... One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. seeing identity John Berger
7a07919 " "If freckles were lovely, and day was night, And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie, Life would be delight,-- But things couldn't go right For in such a sad plight I wouldn't be I. If earth was heaven and now was hence, And past was present, and false was true, There might be some sense But I'd be in suspense For on such a pretense You wouldn't be you. If fear was plucky, and globes were square, And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee Things would seem fair,-- Yet they'd all despair, reality identity if contradictions opposites poetry-quotes E.E. Cummings
bece361 Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- identity Samuel Beckett
499b7ea The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness. identity John O'Donohue
2519c41 Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, "There is always a day of reckoning." The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits--ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human's life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting. psychology-spirituality karma meaning inspiration inspirational-quotes identity life-lessons inspirational ethical fulfillment personal-development meaning-of-life ethics psychology Donald Van de Mark
1deeef4 I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. identity wholeness Audre Lorde
7ccab28 Alan, you seem to think we won't like you unless you do things just like everyone else. Have you ever thought we might like you because you're different? identity Tamora Pierce
3e807fb Maybe if I act well enough, I'll come to believe it myself. identity fantasy Garth Nix
e052083 "For so many years, for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men. But here," he said, so softly I could barely hear him, "here in the dark, with you... I have no name." identity love jamie-fraser Diana Gabaldon
30f58ba They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. identity knowledge Joseph Conrad
4ba0904 When you become the image of your own imagination, it's the most powerful thing you could ever do. destiny identity imagination inspirational transcendence self transformation power creativity RuPaul
45b6225 Be yourself. Don't worry about what other people are thinking of you, because they're probably feeling the same kind of scared, horrible feelings that everyone does. individuality identity life inspirational life-advice advice peer-pressure bullying Phil Lester
ff913ec We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. past identity personal-history self Joan Didion
1d93905 "It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!" I shall only look up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else"--but, oh dear!' cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, 'I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tired of being all alone here!" loneliness identity Lewis Carroll
c576142 Dreams are manifestations of identities. identity Kathy Acker
467e9df You must know that you are worth much to me whether you accomplish anything or not. Even if you are rejected in the world's eyes, you are valuable to me. worth identity value Stormie Omartian
6f76526 We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion trying to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time. light identity Libba Bray
f0ed528 Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave. identity Frances Mayes
e69da75 We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us. identity houses Alain de Botton
83a42df I am not one and simple, but complex and many. identity Virginia Woolf
04a1ab8 She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity. marriage women identity Gabriel García Márquez
febbb30 . . . None of us are born as passive generic blobs waiting for the world to stamp its imprint on us. Instead we show up possessing already a highly refined and individuated soul. Another way of thinking of it is: We're not born with unlimited choices. We can't be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. writing identity Steven Pressfield
34094ec It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. identity identification observational materialism self-delusion James Baldwin
bceeade "[Caine] "Interesting. Me, I've always wanted to know who my real parents were." [Sam] "Let me guess: you're secretly a wizard who was raised by muggles." identity humor harry-potter-related muggles Michael Grant
8ecc2a2 Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos. story personality identity cosmos chaos stories Madeleine L'Engle
b0abb9b And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them. identity friendship isolation Kim Stanley Robinson
51a34de The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. individuality writing identity life Neil Gaiman
dac19ed We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need -- but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need -- within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves. identity home Alain de Botton
65bf0e4 I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your God, your poet, or your philosopher is. But you think you're a member of the VFW, your bowling club, or the Ku Klux Klan, and because you think so, you behave as you do. This too was told you long ago, by Heinrich Mann in Germany, by Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos in the United States. But you recognized neither Mann nor Sinclair. You recognize only the heavyweight champion and Al Capone. If given your choice between a library and a fight, you'll undoubtedly go to the fight. heinrich-mann john-dos-passos orgone subhuman individuality identity upton-sinclair peers groups mob Wilhelm Reich
a1fb99e Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously. identity kundera Milan Kundera
2962835 Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? tragedy loss dream identity dreams false-hope facade fake play sad Arthur Miller
0a3bc56 At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are? -Richard identity life Douglas Coupland
25639a9 He that commends me to mine own content Commends me to the thing I cannot get. I to the world am like a drop of water That in the ocean seeks another drop, Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself: So I, to find a mother and a brother, In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself. unity identity division William Shakespeare
bb24e45 Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are. friends identity peers maturity Brené Brown
0ccbb09 Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave. identity religion immigration Orhan Pamuk
314886f "Once upon a time black male "cool" was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it not by adopting a false pose of cool while feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a "poor me" victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others." identity masculinity bell hooks
ffbf722 I take thee at thy word: Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. theatre shakespeare names poetry inspiration identity life love inspirational new-life birth resurrection theater name William Shakespeare
82f8edd "I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag." identity religion self-reliance nationality home jewish Michael Chabon
ef8031f No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity. - death identity identity-crisis doom despair H.P. Lovecraft
2a07ad3 Even now, she wished she could write a note, push it across the table, and go away to her room. But she was no longer a Second Assistant Librarian of the Great Library of the Clayr. Those days were gone, vanished with everything else that had defined her previous existence and identity. identity fantasy Garth Nix
5bbb7a9 You put on a bishop's robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you're a bishop. So to speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows. philosophical identity Philip K. Dick
90444d3 With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets. identity anonymous trolling internet free-speech Orson Scott Card
f4a5236 "I'm talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don't quite like yourself. And if you walk around looking like someone other than who you are, you could end up getting the wrong job, the wrong friends, who knows what-all. You could end up with somebody else's life." I shrugged again, and smiled. "This is my life," I said. "It doesn't seem like the wrong one." identity life hair self haircut Michael Cunningham
4c90bc1 Sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits. The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. Without them, we'd be unidentifiable. We have to reinvent ourselves every minute. identity Nicole Krauss
e756ac5 People change, though, especially after they are dead. idealism identity redefine redefining impressions reputation reflection Margaret Atwood
a95a602 I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you're from or what you did before. identity Isabel Allende
54253dc For the sake of all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, many of them, it's up to you to have the courage to make good. identity courage-to-be-oneself homophobia diversity Radclyffe Hall
d112609 Your self...is other people, all the people you're tied to, and it's only a thread. identity self Tom Wolfe
dac15c0 "It's my diary", she'd explained. "Every mark I've had drawn on my skin connects me to where and who I've been- so I never forget who I am and how I got here."There was humour in the smile she offered him. "And you know what the real beauty of it is?" Hank had shaken his head. "Nobody can take it away." identity tattoos Charles de Lint
aac8a24 I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn't be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn't feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror's reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. 'Who are you?' I'd ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn't me. I'd watch my lips moving and say it again, 'Who are you? emotion identity change amnesia dissociated-state emotionals identity-alternation identity-switch lookalike personality-switch trigger triggered impostor identity-confusion dissociative split-personality identity-crisis unreal survivor unreality dream-like dissociation dreaming child mirror memory-loss incest sexual-abuse dissociative-identity-disorder multiple-personality-disorder trauma mental-health Alice Jamieson
ea53f8a No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer. self-awareness identity truth Frank Herbert
0f1549b God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity. identity god love Ralph Ellison
8a6ae1f Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, 'grace is always greater.' Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son, (p. 52). identity god love sonship worthlessness doubts failures grace dignity worry worries home son failure guilt Henri J.M. Nouwen
8e9ee1a While we cannot live without history, we need not live within it either. identity religion Amartya Sen
4a79d05 Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves. identity self Frank Herbert
791e5f0 Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces. At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy. Was the last face the real one? No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.) youth identity man-of-many-faces czech masks self novel Milan Kundera
7876e02 I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people -- and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name. motherhood marriage identity housewifery Joan Reardon
68ad1ec There's the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you're a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself. You guard them inside you, because, if you don't, there's no distinction between inside and outside. Secrets are the way you know you even have an inside. A radical exhibitionist is a person who has forfeited his identity. But identity in a vacuum is also meaningless. Sooner or later, the inside of you needs a witness. Otherwise you're just a cow, a cat, a stone, a thing in the world, trapped in your thingness. To have an identity, you have to believe that other identities equally exist. You need closeness with other people. And how is closeness built? By sharing secrets. . . . Your identity exists at the intersection of these lines of trust. trust identity secrets Jonathan Franzen
a0546f8 Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,-however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right; it is at once a staff and a baton. prejudice identity bourgeois-indulgence intellectual-laziness self-righteousness George Eliot
3984234 Before I can say , I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial. personality morality past family identity predispositions heritage personal-history values Wallace Stegner
3d3bfdb Yesterday Allison bought me nail polish in the annoying shade of mauve. How can anyone look at me and think mauve? identity humor mauve nail-polish makeup Katie McGarry
1023531 The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale...there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn't sure who he was anymore. Or who I was. fear identity Laurie Halse Anderson
de4b533 Oh come on, smile. Lisa, Jack... being bisexual is hardly a crime. Best of both worlds, isn't it?' And Ianto pushed her away. 'No,Gwen. No, really it's bloody not. It's the worst of any world because you don't really belong anywhere, because you are never sure of yourself ot those around you. You can't trust in anyone, their motives or their intentions. And because of that, you have, in a world that likes its shiny labels, no true identity. identity Gary Russell
f091e65 Originality must compound with inheritance. identity grace-of-god heritage innovation legacy parenthood Harold Bloom
2f2aaa6 Now I existed solely thanks to the quantum paradox, my brain a collection of qubits in quantum superposition, encoding truths and memories, imagination and irrationality in opposing, contradictory states that existed and didn't exist, all at the same time. identity truth digital-identity digitalization network social-media meta internet Robin Wasserman
b513482 I suppose at heart it was the haircut that did it; that exploded the ordinary order of things and showed me the possibilities that had been there all along, hidden among the patterns in the wallpaper. In a different age, we used to take acid for more or less the same reason. identity change life glbtq possibilities haircut drugs Michael Cunningham
90d08ee "When we finally achieve the full right of participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason why the heritage of world culture--which represents a continuum--should be confused with the notion of race. Japan erected a highly efficient modern technology upon a religious culture which viewed the Emperor as a god. The Germany which produced Beethoven and Hegel and Mann turned its science and technology to the monstrous task of genocide; one hopes that when what are known as the "Negro" societies are in full possession of the world's knowledge and in control of their destinies, they will bring to an end all those savageries which for centuries have been committed in the name of race. From what we are now witnessing in certain parts of the world today, however, there is no guarantee that simply being non-white offers any guarantee of this. The demands of state policy are apt to be more influential than morality. I would like to see a qualified Negro as President of the United States. But I suspect that even if this were today possible, the necessities of the office would shape his actions far more than his racial identity." identity governance Ralph Ellison
cc8f53d Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to construct social realities that celebrate, acknowledge and affirm differences, variety. identity language-learning Bell Hooks
7e4e665 You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things that you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself. lies sacrifice identity lose Jodi Picoult
7369da8 When there is a gap--between your face and your race, between the baby and the mother, between your body and yourself--you are expected, everywhere you go, to explain the gap. identity multiracial race Danzy Senna
92d2100 "Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God..." he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God. So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question." identity god Nadia Bolz-Weber
48f8e43 For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom. sympathy fate individuality freedom identity identify rob robbed Stefan Zweig
cd0ad2d You cannot arrive at your life's purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. You must begin with God, your Creator. You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God and for God - and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny. Every other path leads to a dead end. identity god purpose-driven-life rick-warren purpose Rick Warren
6fa9af7 Dissociation is characterized by a disruption of usually integrated functions of memory, consciousness, identity, or perception of the environment. identity mental-disorder mental-illness memory psychiatry psychology American Psychiatric Association
d36e89f "Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no danger, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third." identity third valentine importance Orson Scott Card
22a6217 But Sir Alistair's gaze was different. Those other men had looked at her with lust or speculation or crass curiosity, but they hadn't been looking at her really. They'd been looking at what she represented to them: physical love or a valuable prize or an object to be gawked at. When Sir Alistair stared at her, well, he was looking at her. identity love superficiality depth Elizabeth Hoyt
d31ce0e The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure. social-justice identity neocolonialism representation race power Bell Hooks
2f73b82 By now it was too late to call St. Jude. He chose an out-of-the-way patch of airport carpeting and lay it down to sleep. He didn't understand what had happened to him. He felt like a piece of paper that had once had coherent writing on it but had been through the wash. He felt roughened, bleached and worn out along the fold lines. He semi-dreamed of disembodied eyes and isolated mouths in ski masks. He'd lost track of what he wanted, and since who a person was was what a person wanted, you could say that he'd lost track of himself. identity Jonathan Franzen
778544c Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion. identity philosophy static dynamic motion individualism self Fernando Pessoa
bbed1f8 You shall not go down twice to the same river, nor can you go home again. That he knew; indeed it was the basis of his view of the world. Yet from that acceptance of transience he evolved his vast theory, wherein what is most changeable is shown to be fullest of eternity, and your relationship to the river, and the river's relationship to you and to itself, turns out to be at once more complex and more reassuring than a mere lack of identity. You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been. identity transience Ursula K. Le Guin
43956e9 Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves. individuality identity originality self Erich Fromm
410bfdf Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura's method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self ever more visible, perceivable, seizable, sizeable, she keeps adding to it more and more attributes and she attempts to identify herself with them (with the risk that the essence of the self may be buried by the additional attributes). identity Milan Kundera
4d3ef10 But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of his dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day. The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link. Here life ceased to obstruct or assault him. Here was a place where humanity was not always pushing, rushing, running as if with a fire at its back identity immigration Jhumpa Lahiri
6243b69 What I was trying to say, maybe, is that I don't know what it is I'm capable of transforming into. identity transforming Nick Flynn
e10f027 Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an 'alien' element. identity inmigrant Gloria E. Anzaldúa
8e8ed8f And yet does the appetite for new days ever really cease? identity science philosophy life-philosophy John Updike
f7ac06a Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past. identity legacy Mark Kurlansky
60bf912 "Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa's forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. "What?" identity daughter growing-up parents mother father human-nature roles David Mitchell
a4d0ba4 What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name? want passion identity destructiveness health need Donna Tartt
a465e24 "Patriarchal hip-hop ushered in a world where black males could declare that they were "keeping it real" when what they were really doing was taking the dead patriarchal protest of the black power movement and rearticulating it in forms that, though entertaining, had for the most part no transformative power, no ability to intervene on the politics of domination, and turn the real lives of black men around." identity bell hooks
eafc12b There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom share my body and life and money and energy with. free-will identity Elizabeth Gilbert
b748d7f I felt myself a new species of child. Not a boy (most assuredly) but neither a (mere) girl. That skirt-bound race perpetually moving about serving tea had nothing to do with me. I had such high hopes, you see. The boundaries of the world seemed vast. I would visit Rome, Paris, Constantinople. Underground cafes presented in my mind where, crushed against wet walls, a (handsome, generous) friend and I sat discussing--many things. Deep things, new ideas. Strange green lights shone in the streets, the sea lapped nearby against greasy tilted moorings; there was trouble afoot, a revolution, into which my friend and I must-- Well, as is often the case, my hopes were...not realized. identity gender George Saunders
2c6ef38 And, she thought uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel like, Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that? young-adult identity Penelope Farmer
b1538ff Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wistful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States. identity national-identity united-states W. Somerset Maugham
5aa8352 The Complete Work is essentially dramatic, thought it takes different forms - prose passages in this first volume, poems and philosophies in other volumes. It's the product of the temperament I've been blessed or cursed with - I'm not sure which. All I know is that the author of these lines (I'm not sure if also of these books) has never had just one personality, and has never thought or felt except dramatically - that is, through invented persons, or personalities, who are more capable than he of feeling what's to be felt. identity heteronyms Fernando Pessoa
a84567d Those words . . . national and portrait. They were both to do with identity: the identity of a culture (place, language and history), the identity of an individual human being as an object for mimetic representation. identity individual nation A.S. Byatt
e671548 She thought, I need no cup. I am Chalice. I am filling with the grief and hurt and fear of my demesne; the shattered earthlines weigh me down; I am brimming with the needs of my people. identity empowerment earth-mother self-realization Robin McKinley
cde214a Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied freedom identity humor Katherine Paterson
c034968 ...he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them them over and over again to give birth to themselves. identity life self Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
df1d25c One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity--not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals. identity life respponsibilities goals decisions values Terri Apter
f734a4c I believe he was feeling a bit nervous. Possibly it was my costume that took him aback. I was dressed quite well, even elegantly, and looked as if I belonged to the best society. identity style society fashion Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25b3e22 We must have sinned greatly, at some juncture long buried in our protozoic past, to deserve such a universe identity science philosophy life-philosophy John Updike
68f8c4a It has taken almost half my life away from Ireland for me to truly feel what home really is, and it is not what I was expecting. In the end it was not a place, or a past, or any sort of single, dazzling epiphany. It was all the little things. Cold butter spread thick on sweet wheaten bread or hot, subsiding potatoes; the scent of wet, black soil; a bushy spine of grass on a one-track road; wide iron gates leading to high beech corridors; the chalky smell of a cow's wet muzzle, and, most of all, in Seamus Heaney's words, the sound of rivers in the trees. identity ireland home Trish Deseine
6ebda76 Then you are a poet?' she asked, fingering the flyer in her pocket. 'No not at all,' he waved his hand. 'I am merely a character in a poem. poets poems poetry identity karen-tei-yamashita tropic-of-orange self poet stories Karen Tei Yamashita
5c072e4 The moment when mortality, ephemerality, uncertainty, suffering, or the possibility of change arrives can split a life in two. Facts and ideas we might have heard a thousand times assume a vivid, urgent, felt reality. We knew them then, but they matter now. They are like guests that suddenly speak up and make demands upon us; sometimes they appear as guides, sometimes they just wreck what came before or shove us out the door. We answer them, when we answer, with how we lead our lives. Sometimes what begins as bad news prompts the true path of a life, a disruptive visitor that might be thanked only later. Most of us don't change until we have to, and crisis is often what obliges us to do so. Crises are often resolved only through anew identity and new purpose, whether it's that of a nation or a single human being. mortality identity love crisis Rebecca Solnit
8a2e5f1 "I know where I came from--but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once--and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. loneliness identity missing-something Robert A. Heinlein
1358e2c "Britain never regained its naval and economic dominance over the world, and it remains notoriously conflicted ("Brexit") about its role in Europe. But Britain is still among the world's six richest nations, is still a parliamentary democracy under a figurehead monarch, is still a world leader in science and technology, and still maintains as its currency the pound sterling rather than the euro" identity Jared Diamond
d5ff665 The headlights of parked cars shone through the rain, and the sidewalks extended, empty, into the darkness. Underground, the sewers surged like rivers, and a few blocks away, sirens blared. He was no longer aware of his heart or thoughts, only the image of a sunken face staring up from a well, the paleness rising through the water like polished bone. A ringed hand reached toward it, but as the fingers approached, the face would sink away, its eyes opening, closing, and the droplets of red falling like leaves. He was a child running through an autumn cemetery, leaping over cast iron fences, the rain bleeding into the tombstones and the roofs of the mausoleums, his legs following the wings of a crow, flapping to the north. A hedge of withered roses stood between him and his childhood house. He tripped and grazed his cheek on a manhole, his red blooming in the water. The sun set behind the hill; the house turned black--abandoned and derelict--and Chris knew he had to keep running, ahead, into the unknown. literature identity literary-fiction coming-of-age self-realization Cory Ingram
14112cd Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not think, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world-which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us, very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will--that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. racism history morality identity blacks whites american-history race-relations race James Baldwin
26c750a I knew myself for the first time in a week, standing on earth instead of polished marble. earth identity nature-lover naomi-novik uprooted Naomi Novik
feb1148 If a woman is interested in her own struggle into identity and power, then she will be interested in other women. The lives of these, and other women, show me what a woman can do even without formal power, education, or rights, in a world dominated by men. They are inspirational examples of the strength of the female spirit. identity Philippa Gregory
cefca88 Human beings *do* metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered. identity metamorphosis Orson Scott Card
064d25d "You appear to be a mass of contradictions," Dr Washburn said. "There's a subsurface violence almost always in control, but very much alive. There's also a pensiveness that seems painful for you, yet you rarely give vent to the anger that pain must provoke." violence pain pensiveness identity Robert Ludlum
863baf3 "It kept coming back to joy-- how could I live a life filled with it? And always, the answer that came back to me was "Write." ... I am here because of the indigenous people of this country, because of the enslaved people who were here before me, the young people of the civil rights movements who fought hard to get me to this moment. My biggest responsibility is to recognize that I am part of the continuum, that I didn't just appear and start writing stuff down. I'm writing stuff down because Andre Lorde wrote stuff down, because James Baldwin wrote stuff down... and all the people who came before me -- set the stage for my work. I have to keep all of that in my heart as I move through the world, not only for the deep respect I have for them, but also for my own strength. So my advice to other young writers: Read widely. Study other writers. Be thoughtful, Then go out and do the work of changing the form, finding your own voice, and saying what you need to say. Be fearless. And care. The fact that young people continue to rise brings me such joy. They are where I look to find my hope. -- "Continue to Rise: A Conversation with Jacqueline Woodson" identity writers-on-writing Glory Edim
17083aa It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence. racism identity identity-confusion racism-and-culture respectability self-actualization identity-crisis race-and-racism-in-america individualism race-relations racism-in-america respect self-respect self-esteem James Baldwin
3dcd8dc "Peter." The fine hair along her spine rising, Vicky could feel the power in a name. This is who you are, it said. Come back to us." identity power-in-a-name who-you-are Tanya Huff
f8d6bbd "Immigration, exile, being uprooted and made a pariah may be the most effective way yet devised to impress on an individual the arbitrary nature of his or her own existence. Who needed a shrink of a guru when everyone we met asked us who we were the moment we opned our mouths and they heard the accent? The truth is, we had no simple answers. Being rattled around in freight trains, open trucks, and ratty ocean-liners, we ended up being a puzzle even to ourselves. At first, that was hard to take; then we got used to the idea. We began to savor it, to enjoy it. Being nobody struck me personally as being far more interesting than being somebody. The streets were full of these "somebodys" putting on confident airs. Half the time I envied them; half the time I looked down on them with pity. I knew something they didn't, something hard to come by unless history gives you a good kick in the ass: how superfluous and insignificant in any grand scheme mere individuals are. And how pitiless are those who have no understanding that this could be their fate too." identity immigration Charles Simic
ca6b6e1 I am me and I have been Juliette and both of us have dreamed this dream repeatedly. And what makes this dream so unfortunate is that it is a true thing that happened to someone else ... who is both of us. identity Charles Stross
f6e6a18 My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been. identity former-self the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past self Julian Barnes
72c6ff0 We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains identity science wisdom wise science-fiction Martin Gardner
08af27f I want you to be able to me, and as my love for you is so much of me (all of me, making me more than myself) then you must see that too. identity love the-beloved henry-and-cato iris-murdoch seen self Iris Murdoch
4f4ad79 Oh my life is so awful, it's just so awful to be me, you don't know what it's like waking every morning and finding the whole horror of being yourself still there. depression identity life the-black-prince iris-murdoch unhappy self-loathing trapped horror Iris Murdoch
681017f The question of identity is a question involving the most profound panic--a terror as primary as the nightmare of the mortal fall. identity James Baldwin
da0bfa7 "Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to "receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land." identity discipleship nationalism Barbara W. Tuchman
e3496ff "One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell me how good they were in the past. Same with countries. You don't want to forget your identity. I am glad that you were great in the fourteenth century, but that was then and this is now. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh." In societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too many days looking backward. They see dignity, affirmation, and self-worth not by mining the present but by chewing on the past. And even that is usually not a real past but an imagined and adorned past. Indeed, such societies focus all their imagination on making that imagined past even more beautiful than it ever was, and then they cling to it..., rather than imagining a better future and acting on that." memories past identity Thomas L. Friedman
abb7d5d Without somebody to watch me, laugh at my jokes, tell me what to do, ask me questions, race me to the river, make me guess the names of birds, or challenge me to count the silvery fish in a school, there was nothing for me to do. Without somebody to be somebody to, it was as though I wasn't somebody myself. identity Michael Dorris
b988b15 I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center. identity Joan Didion
2e216b2 It has taken almost half my life away from Ireland for me to truly feel what home really is, and it is not what I was expecting. In the end it was not a place, or a past, or any sort of single, dazzling epiphany. It was all the little things. Cold butter spread thick on sweet wheaten bread or hot, subsiding potatoes; the scent of wet, black soil; a bushy spine of grass on a one-track road; wife iron gates leading to high beech corridors; the chalky smell of a cow's wet muzzle, and, most of all, in Seamus Heaney's words, the sound of rivers in the trees. identity ireland home Trish Deseine
3d5ec6a "I know genes are a big deal, son, but they're not the be-all and end-all." Rob slowed to a halt at the lights, wishing the dickhead behind would back off. "If they were, you'd be in a seafood salad and I'd be in prison." identity self-belief genetics Karen Traviss
b06434b Se amava quel viso non indulgente, era perche era netto, espressivo e risoluto. Vedeva, o gli sembrava di vedere, come tali qualita fossero state mascherate o soffocate da atteggiamenti piu convenzionali: una modestia simulata, un'appropriata pazienza, un disprezzo che si spacciava per calma. Al suo peggio - oh, lui la vedeva chiaramente, malgrado la possessione che esercitava su di lui - al suo peggio guardava in basso e di traverso e sorrideva timidamente, e questo sorriso era quasi una smorfia meccanica, perche era una bugia, una convenzione, un breve forzato riconoscimento delle aspettative del mondo. Lu aveva visto subito, cosi gli pareva, cio che lei era in essenza, seduta alla tavola di Crabb Robinson ad ascoltare dispute maschili, credendosi osservatrice inosservata. Se, riflette, la maggior parte degli uomini avesse visto la durezza e la fierezza e la tirannia, si, la tirannia di quel volto, se ne sarebbe ritratta. Il suo destino sarebbe stato di essere amata solo da timidi inetti, segretamente desiderosi che lei li punisse o li comandasse, o da anime candide, convinte che la fredda aria di delicato riserbo esprimesse una sorta di purezza femminile che tutti a quei tempi facevano mostra di desiderare. Ma lui aveva capito immediatamente che lei era per lui, che lei aveva qualcosa in comune con lui, lei com'era veramente o avrebbe potuto essere, se fosse stata libera. identity love women-s-nature possession A.S. Byatt
7a6e9bd "Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, "the face you had before you were born," as the Zen masters say. It is your substantial self, your absolute identify, which can never be gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality, or formula whatsoever. The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative identity, is the necessary suffering needed to find "the pearl of great price" that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell." suffering identity Richard Rohr
6ed5b79 You're doing your thing, why can't I do my thing? I must be me even if I suffer for it. identity henry-and-cato iris-murdoch self-expression self suffer Iris Murdoch
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