#identity

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity. ↗

— Ralph Ellison

#god #identity #love #art

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

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#originality #nothing

I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#reality #real

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

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#self-image #sense-of-self #stories #storytelling #story

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#hispanic-american #identity #latina #latina-american #latino-american

I think, tribalism is a mental prison…and pride of identity coupled with arrogance is one of the leading factors that limit one’s ability to abandon it. ↗

— Duop Chak Wuol

#limitations-of-knowledge #tribalism #arrogance

I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people -- and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name. ↗

— Joan Reardon

#housewifery #identity #marriage #motherhood #family

I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#self-knowledge #voice #self-knowledge