#identity

I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#empowerment #flaws #freedom #gender #ideal-woman

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. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#change

Society historically has a difficult time with the concept of something new and foreign that shakes up our comfortable views, especially if it involves the very volatile question of sexual identity. ↗

— Mercedes Ruehl

#concept #difficult #difficult time #especially #foreign

We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#depend #dislikes #egotism #identity #likes

Love holds no expectation on what you will be, it simply values who you are. ↗

— E'yen A. Gardner

#identity #inspirational #love #love-yourself #now

I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee. ↗

— Bella Abzug

#because #before #began #coffee #establish

who are you really? you are not a name or a height, or a weight or a gender you are not an age and you are not where you are from you are your favorite books and the songs stuck in your head you are your thoughts and what you eat for breakfast on Saturday mornings you are a thousand things but everyone chooses to see the million things you are not you are not where you are from you are where you are going and i'd like to go there too ↗

— m.k

#who-you-are #age

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. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#houses #identity #architecture

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 why the wrestling --just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is...a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I'm...It's me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose. ↗

— Tony Kushner

#beauty

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication. ↗

— Ralph Ellison

#after #communication #critics #form #gave