#identity

"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."

"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."

"To get people to notice you, you must be unique. If I were invisible, everybody would see me for who I am as a person."

"Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one."

"National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same."

"But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us—to knowWhence our lives come and where they go."

"My name represents me, but it’s not who I am. It’s just a collection of letters. Unfortunately, none of them are love letters."

"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."

"The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating."

"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."

"People leave imprints on our lives, shaping who we become in much the same way that a symbol is pressed into the page of a book to tell you who it comes from. Dogs, however, leave paw prints on our lives and our souls, which are as unique as fingerprints in every way."

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."

"Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice."[Stanford University commencement speech, 2005]"

"The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary."

"I’ll wear a maze on a necklace, dangling over my chest, because if you want to get at my heart, you have to be ready to lose yourself."

"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."

"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets."

"I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art."

"I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me--they, and the love and loyaty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could."

"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."