Quotes about identity

You are a man with complicated beliefs, who does not accept everything you are told. You decide how you are defined. Don’t surrender that to them. They will gleefully take the chance to define you, if you allow it.

It struck Lacy that she didn’t really know what color a chameleon was before it started changing.

Either Josie was someone she didn’t want to be, or she was someone who nobody wanted.

Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.

One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person.

“I saw myself,” Taran answered. “In the time I watched, I saw strength – and frailty. Pride and vanity, courage and fear. Of wisdom, a little. Of folly, much. Of intentions, many good ones; but many more left undone. In this, alas, I saw myself a man like any other.

“But this, too, I saw,” he went on. “Alike as men may seem, each is different as flakes of snow, no two the same. You told me you had no need to seek the Mirror, knowing you were Annlaw Clay-Shaper. Now I know who I am: myself and none other. I am Taran.”

"I don't even know who I am."

"In a way," answered Gwydion, "that is something we must all discover for ourselves."

"I feel a kinship with you, too, you who have lost both brother and father. I know you have been judged and spoken of as the daughter of Valentine Morgenstern, and now the sister of Jonathan. There will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let people decide who you are. Decide for yourself. That freedom is not a gift; it is a birthright. I hope that you and Jace will use it."

It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.

When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.

She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.

You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood.