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...

Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.

and that’s all I ever am to them.

How do you eat your roots?

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...

Yes, probably some words will be changed here and there, and this issue is under discussion, especially the Iraqi identity. We are discussing this article aiming at achieving an aspiration of the Arab League as...

…at some point we must achieve our identity -we can’t be always in adolescence seeking who we are…

We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.

Our identities are as fluid as our personal experiences are diverse.

If “Manners maketh man,” as someone saidThen he’s the hero of the dayIt takes a man to suffer ignorance and smileBe yourself, no matter what they say.”(Englishman in New York)

Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?

This has helped to create an identity that separates us from other tea companies.

In retrospect, I think those people dressed in costumes walking up Montparnasse must have seen someting before anybody else did. When they looked at me and said, “This guy comes with us,” I think it...

Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars.

You became the sum total of where you lived, where you shopped, which church you went to, how many kids you had and which taxi company you used, and you only associated with people who...

She was right. After all, if she herself had wondered whether she was Indian enough — she, who had always been to me a sort of epitome of Indian — then who could be? Who...

The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him – which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows

Fluidity means that our black identities are constantly changing as we respond to circumstances in our families and communities of origin, and as we interact with a wider world.

In this world where I sit at my desk writing these words, people die, they pass on, people are mortal. In the cyber world we inhabit they do not.

New Orleans, city of roaches, city of decay, city of our family, and of happy, happy people.

Oh Harry,” [Gwen] said. “I wish I were a different kind of person.”What kind of person, he wanted to know.”Someone,” she said slowly, “who truly loves life.”He was still looking at her, still cradling his...

There’s nothing like an orgasm to force a person to think–and more often than not, to think too much.

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but...

Shakespeare asked what’s in a name. Well, each of my clones won’t be named the same as me, but they’ll be me and just as sweet.

Anyway, it’s a good thing we’re human. We design business spreadsheets, paint programs, and word processing equipment. So that tells you where we’re at as a species. What is the search for the next great...

Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the...

It’s Unfair to be fair,For Life is unfair

After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why.

Sorel’s basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by...

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Our talents don’t define us any more than our faults.

Before 1521 we could have been anything and everything not Filipino; after 1565 we can be nothing but Filipino.

Could circumstances possibly change who I forever am in You?

Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes...

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

I kept waiting for the part where I’d finally know who I was — some flashing, neon moment of relief, but it never came.

I’m talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don’t quite look like yourself. And if you walk around looking like someone other than who you are, you could end up getting...

I don’t know what kind of great I’m bound to be,” Dove considered his prospects calmly, “all I know for certain is I’m born a world-shaker.

When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.

I wish I knew who I am,” I whispered to the stars in Baya’s eyes.Slowly, Baya shook his head. “Oh, Dust Girl, that’s the hardest wish of all. Not even Baya can give you that...

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

We at Apple had forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.

We are caught in the in between of what we already are what we are yet to be.

You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.

I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don’t really remember the story, or...

Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot.

We are not defined by the family into which we are born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.

Your identity depends on your heart’s ability to excuse not on the power or the money you own.

Will you let me go for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?

I won’t sleepif that’s what it takesto not wake upas myself