#identity

Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it. ↗

— John Lahr

#love #memory #love

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. ... Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#gender #gender-identity #marriage

Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves -- this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars. (p. 65) ↗

— Hilary Thayer Hamann

#girls #hamann #identity #masks #sexuality

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#pretend #being

There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent. ↗

— Monique Wittig

#identity #slavery #slavery

Through others we become ourselves. ↗

— Lev S. Vygotsky

#educatin #identity #imitation #psychology #self-awareness

She was looking for something I could never give her." Again his dark eyes bored into Julia's mind. "You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don't think you will find it in another person. You won't. It's not there. You must find it in yourself. ↗

— Iain Pears

#individuality #search #self-awareness #self-reliance #dreams

I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books. ↗

— Beatrice Sparks

#sense-of-self #identity

If you understood everything I said, you’d be me ↗

— Miles Davis

#understanding #identity

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! ↗

— Lewis Carroll

#identity #loneliness #identity