#identity

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. ↗

— Edward Gorey

#work #artists

I don't believe everything happens for a reason. But I still search for reasons anyway. It's like I don't want to admit that maybe everything really is totally random...that people are just molecules in the air, bumping into each other and floating away again." -p150, NOTES TO SELF ↗

— Avery Sawyer

#identity #memory #people #soul-searching #teen

Freedom isn't just about voting and marrying and kissing on the street, although all of these things are important. Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do. ↗

— David Levithan

#lgbt-identity #lgbt-rights #lgbtq #beauty

Soul, if you want to learn secrets,
 your heart must forget about shame
 and dignity. You are God's lover,
 yet you worry what people are saying. ↗

— Rumi

#identity #love #rumi #shame #love

We are each what never leaves us, what we never see the back of is the self. But what loves us is at the back, as Eurydice was escorting him out without his knowing. ↗

— Christina Davis

#love #poetry #love

Ladies, no matter how hard you try, a man will never complete you. Only God can. And if you don’t know your identity in Him, you’ll be lost forever. ↗

— Deborah N. Kabwang

#identity #lost #love #lust #love

Why not? It's true. My best hope is to not disgrace myself and..." He hesitates. And what?" I say. I don't know how to say it exactly. Only... I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense?" he asks. I shake my head. How could he die as anyone but himself? "I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not." I bite my lip feeling inferior. While I've been ruminating on the availability of trees, Peeta has been struggling with how to maintain his identity. His purity of self. "Do you mean you won't kill anyone?" I ask. No, when the time comes, I'm sure I'll kill just like everybody else. I can't go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to... to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games," says Peeta. But you're not," I say. "None of us are. That's how the Games work." Okay, but within that frame work, there's still you, there's still me," he insists. "Don't you see?" A little, Only... no offense, but who cares, Peeta?" I say. I do. I mean what else am I allowed to care about at this point?" he asks angrily. He's locked those blue eyes on mine now, demanding an answer. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#identity #change

Don’t bother calling the cops, because nobody can find me here. I know, because after all these years, I’m still trying to find myself.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#cops #find-myself #identity #introspective #police

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#transformation #love

Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that's why it survives." [Turning the Page: The future of reading is backlit and bright, Newsweek Magazine, March 25, 2010] ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#culture #identity #reading #self-awareness #self-awareness