Identity Quotes

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

~ John Lahr

This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products

~ Larry Mccaffrey

In spite of the three hours I spent combing over the details, I have, to this day, a very persistent certainty that hidden inside me is the revolting knowledge of days when I wasn't quite myself. I now suspect that my inexplicable bouts of exhaustion are due to the massive effort of keeping those days behind me.

~ Tony Burgess

Does being true to one's self mean offering the literal truth or the truth that should have been, the truth of the image of one's self? It hardly matters by this time. By this time the border between seeing straight on and seeing round the corners of solid objects, between the world as smooth and coherent and the world as dissociated skinless particle, is thoroughly blurred. No longer a case of double vision, but of two separate eyes whose separate visions - what happened and what might have happened - come together in what we call the past, which we see with hindsight. Memory is revision. I have just destroyed another piece of my past, to tell a story.

~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

We have to watch Nana's life slipping away from her like a forgotten word. I thought I understood what's happening to her, but this isn't like being robbed a penny at a time. Memories aren't currency to spend; they're us. Age isn't stealing from my grandmother; it's slowly unwinding her.

~ Shaun David Hutchinson

Memory, of course, is unreliable, often evil, but it is the source of our identity.--Tennessee Williams

~ James Grissom

We are what we remember. If we lose our memory, we lose our identity and our identity is the accumulation of our experiences. When we walk down the memory lane, it can be unconsciously, willingly, selectively, impetuously or sometimes grudgingly. By following our stream of consciousness we look for lost time and things past. Some reminiscences become anchor points that can take another scope with the wisdom of hindsight. (Walking down the memory lane )

~ Erik Pevernagie

What a gulf between the self which experiences and the self which describes experience.

~ Edmund Wilson

But it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was deep and allowed my mind to relax entirely; then it would let go of the map of the place where I had fallen asleep and, when I woke in the middle of the night, since I did not know where I was, I did not even understand in the first moment who I was; all I had, in its original simplicity, was the sense of existence as it may quiver in the depths of an animal; I was more bereft than a caveman; but then the memory - not yet of the place where I was, but of several of those where I had lived and where I might have been - would come to me like help from on high to pull me out of the void from which I could not have got out on my own; I passed over centuries of civilization in one second, and the image confusedly glimpsed of oil lamps, then of wing-collar shirts, gradually recomposed my self's original features.

~ Marcel Proust

Lose your face: become capable of loving without remembering, without phantasm and without interpretation, without taking stock. Let there just be fluxes, which sometimes dry up, freeze or overflow, which sometimes combine or diverge.

~ Gilles Deleuze

No one can soothe my inner being like you. No one can make me look to the future with such excitement like you did. No one can understand me, fulfill me, fit me like you did. ~Emma Ranstein

~ Lindsay Detwiler

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here its like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself if I could just come in I swear I'll leave. Won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.

~ Miranda Lambert

What is this 'I'? If you analyse it closely you will, I think, find that it is just a little bit more than a collection of single data (experiences and memories), namely the canvas upon which they are collected. And you will, on close introspection, find that what you really mean by 'I' is that ground-stuff upon which they are collected. You may come to a distant country, lose sight of all your friends, may all but forget them; you acquire new friends, you share life with them as intensely as you ever did with your old ones. Less and less important will become the fact that, while living your new life, you still recollect the old one. 'The youth that was I', you may come to speak of him in the third person, indeed the protagonist of the novel you are reading is probably nearer to your heart, certainly more intensely alive and better known to you. Yet there has been no intermediate break, no death. And even if a skilled hypnotist succeeded in blotting out entirely all your earlier reminiscences, you would not find that he had killed you. In no case is there a loss of personal existence to deplore. Nor will there ever be.

~ Erwin Schrödinger

the essential feature of the Dissociative Disorders is a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity,or perception

~ American Psychiatric Association

People with dissociative disorders are like actors trapped in a variety of roles. They have difficulty integrating their memories, their sense of identity and aspects of their consciousness into a continuous whole. They find many parts of their experience alien, as if belonging to someone else. They cannot remember or make sense of parts of their past.

~ David Speigel

Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it's even more true today, even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean, a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bullshit, right?

~ Sherman Alexie

I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all.

~ Peter S. Beagle

Because Jesus paid it all, we are free from the need to do it all. Our identity, worth, and value, are not anchored in what we can accomplish but in what Jesus accomplished for us.

~ Tullian Tchividjian

To know Jesus Christ, you must first understand his supernatural identity. He is God.

~ Felix Wantang

My identity and my security are not in my spiritual progress. My identity and my security are in God’s acceptance of me given as a gift in Christ.

~ J.d. Greear

Who are you? What are you? Why are you?

~ Debasish Mridha

The artificial preservation of local identities is essential to tourism. In other words, the tourist represents both the attempt to transcend all borders and identities and the simultaneous attempt to fix the identities of non-Western subjects within its gaze.

~ William T. Cavanaugh

No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn't feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car. Get out - change your shoes and start walking.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

~ Albert Einstein

Memories tell me who I was, not who I’ll become. They don’t fix the present any more than they fix the past.

~ Caroline George

More often than not- Life moves really fast! It's only for you to pause and breathe! Sadly, none else can do that for you!

~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

The more you make your thoughts and beliefs into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.

~ Eckhart Tolle

I'm old enough to have lived in a country where, if you were willing to work hard, you could have a fairly nice life. You could support your family, and even get a shot at owning your own home. But you never thought you'd get a swimming pool. Now culture has hypnotised people into thinking they're really nothing if they're not wealthy and a Kardashian.

~ Tom Petty

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 heretill I'm somebody else--but, oh dear!' cried Alice, with a sudden burstof tears, 'I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tiredof being all alone here!

~ Lewis Carroll

I know what you might think; that being alone is a sign of loneliness. But the way I see it, sometimes being alone serves as a period of insight as to who you really are. Think about it.

~ Lauren Lola

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!

~ Robert A. Heinlein

To be insular is to be independent. But it is also to be alone.

~ Peter Ackroyd

My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there.

~ Sara Sheridan

-That's kind of sad.-I used to think so. Now I think: you're born a certain way. Later you get to decide how much you want to fight/change that. I don't mind being alone.-You must mind. If you didn't you wouldn't be doing this with me.

~ Doug Dorst

I fall in love with Paraíso. It’s like a giant playground where I’m never scolded for running around recklessly, where I’m almost overwhelmed with the amount of attention and love I receive from Mami’s family. In New York, I’m invisible.

~ Raquel Cepeda

You are a cosmic traveler; your body is temporary, but its essence is eternal...

~ Dave Zebian

Illumination is remembering your identity as the eternal spirit and energy that animates all that is.

~ Raphael Zernoff

The child will leave the nest. The best paint job will crack. The best play will become boring. The best work will grow tedious. The best art will lose meaning. The greatest creation will decay. Behind all this, lies my true self.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

Remember who you really are. You cannot be destroyed or hurt. You cannot be harmed or killed. You, the real you, will always be present and powerful.

~ Vironika Tugaleva