Identity Quotes - Page 2

The more I did it―the more it owned me. It made things matter. It put a spine into my spineless life and that spine spread, into backbone, ribs, collarbone, neck held high.
It was something. Don't say it wasn't.

I invented you the way I like but I have fallen for you the way you are.

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

My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.

I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.

I knew that (job) had to be a humbling role for my dad, but he never allowed it to become humiliating work.

You are not your thoughts!! This simple yet powerful statement can greatly change the quality of your life.

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

Our identity in the world is like a wave from the Ocean.

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.

It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not 'one thing in my life' - not even the most important - because my life no longer belongs to me because...you are always me.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.

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.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice."

[Stanford University commencement speech, 2005]

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.

You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.

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.

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.

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.

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.