Identity Crisis Quotes

“I don't know who I am right now. But I know who I'm not. And I like that.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“¡Don’t tell me what to think, niña malcriada! And, you—” Don Gabriel pointed at Marco, “Stop filling my daughter’s head with nonsense.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity.
- Through the Gates of the Silver Key”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“Ne treba čovjek da se pretvori u svoju suprotnost. Sve što u njemu vrijedi, to je ranjivo. Možda nije lako živjeti na svijetu, ali ako mislimo da nam ovdje nije mjesto, biće još gore. A željeti snagu i bezosjećajnost, znači svetiti se sebi zbog razočarenja. I onda, to nije izlaz, to je dizanje ruku od svega što čovjek može da bude. Odricanje svih obzira je prastari strah, davna suština ljudskog bića koje želi moć, jer se boji.”
― Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish

“A person who is truly cool is a work of art. And remember, original works of art cost exponentially higher than imitations. Just take a look at the the coolest people in history. They will always be a part of history for being extremely original individuals, not imitations.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I don't think I could ever live with either a man or a woman for a long time. Male and female are attractive to my mind, but when it comes to the sexual act I am afraid. In every situation I need a lot of stimulation before I am conquered by the forces of passion and lust. But confusion, before and after, is the dominant factor.

I dreamed many times about a mature man with experience who would have the vigour of a boy but an adult's polished methods. Strangely enough, I also dreamed about women of my mother's age who were ideal lovers. These dreams came superimposed on one another. Sometimes the masculine element was dominant, sometimes the feminine one. At other times I wasn't sure. I saw a female body with male organs or a male body with female ones. These pictures, blended together in my mind, occasionally brought pleasure but more often pain.”
― Adam Thirlwell, Politics

“Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.”
― Clarice Lispector

“Are you broken? Good. Now fall apart completely. You will realize that what has fallen apart is not you. It's just a thin external coating that hides your pure, eternal and ever-shining being.”
― Shunya

“...it is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“She was returning home to be the wife of, mother of, First Lady of, but what did that really mean?”
― Stacy Hawkins Adams, Lead Me Home

“The Storm Stranger by Stewart Stafford

Were I to shed forty coats,
Or forty layers of this skin,
I'd stay an intruder in myself,
At a crossroads in a storm.

Stranger in my own country,
Pariah to everything beloved,
Organ rejection by my own body,
A lantern wanderer in limbo.

All foul, cast out by my lamp,
Saving those mistreating me,
Traversing sanity's outer rings,
I turn my collar up and trudge on.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.

Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal.

You still get to be the hero.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“(...) Nuży mnie własny pokój i nuży mnie niebo. Moje istnienie skrzy się tylko wtedy, gdy wszystkie jego ścianki wystawione są na wzrok wielu ludzi. Niech się nie zjawią, a jestem pełen dziur i kurczę się jak spalony papier.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Taking a new, unknown path, especially when you've been treading for so long on a well-known path, is very hard. Not only do you have to overcome your fear of the 'unknown unknowns' and trust your future self to handle them effectively, but you also have to challenge your current self's identity. How do you define yourself? Who are you?”
― Daniel Voigt Godoy, You're Not Your Job: Going Above and Beyond for Yourself

“At that moment, I wished my whole consciousness could be erased. I wanted to escape from my own awareness, to wander freely in a world outside my mind, but understanding now that I would always be two people, I realized that I'd never be able to let go.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Sessiz Ev

“I was graced with this remarkable truth: “Knowing who you are in Jesus Christ makes it easier to function in this world.” I soon realized I didn't know who I was in Jesus
Christ. Not only did I not know my identity in Jesus Christ, but I also realized that I didn't know my Saviour enough to know myself. It's like, how can I know who I am if I don't
know who He is?”
― Shakara Ann Francis, A Mother’s Pain but Our Father Cares: A COLLECTION OF POEMS AND SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM A FIRST-TIME MOTHER

“Overall, it is this work on ourselves that conditions the evolution of consciousness. It is about ceasing to be subjected to beliefs we consider our own, which generate inner conflicts and are the source of our suffering, as they distance us from our essence, our true nature. These beliefs lead us to adopt an erroneous vision of ourselves, based on the false idea that our thoughts define us. We are not what we thing or say, but what we do.”
― Marie Chieze, Words of the Shaman: 50 Quotes from Paching Hoé Lambaiho

“So, what are you up to, where are you going on your vacation, that's a cute dress--no one knows what to talk about with an unmarried girl. Whereas a husband, children, an apartment, a washing machine--endless topics of conversation.”
― Annie Ernaux, A Frozen Woman

“In a world obsessed with borders, I found my home not in places, but in the spaces between them, where cultures converge and identities blur.”
― Camellia Yang, The Invisible Third Culture Adult

“[...] 'other people provide me with my existence'. On his own, he feels that he is empty and nobody. 'I can't feel real unless there is someone there.... ' Nevertheless, he cannot feel at ease with another person, because he feels as 'in danger' with others as by himself. He is, therefore, driven compulsively to seek company, but never allows himself to 'be himself in the presence of anyone else. He avoids social anxiety by never really being with others. He never quite says what he means or means what he says. The part he plays is always not quite himself. He takes care to laugh when he thinks a joke is not funny, and look bored when he is amused. He makes friends with people he does not really like and is rather cool to those with whom he would 'really' like to be friends. No one, therefore, really knows him, or understands him. He can be himself in safety only in isolation, albeit with a sense of emptiness and unreality. With others, he plays an elaborate game of pretence and equivocation. His social self is felt to be false and futile. What he longs for most is the possibility of 'a moment of recognition', but whenever this by chance occurs, when he has by accident 'given himself away', he is covered in confusion and suffused with panic.”
― R.D.Laing, The Divided Self( An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness)[DIVIDED SELF REV/E][Paperback]

“Peasant to princess to queen to empress.
To spring from the first to the second was an act of God. To leap all four in a single year--- it was impossible.
And yet here she was, living her impossible life, Briar Rose the peasant bard, Aurora the princess, some new furious woman the queen.
What version of her would rise up once she became empress?
How many different versions of one person could she hold within her body until she broke from the strain?”
― Sara Raasch, A Sword In Slumber

“Death has a strange, polarizing effect on the person who's lost. the most. The immense sadness and dread that comes with losing the one who loved and supported you unconditionally is swift and inescapable. It begs the question "who am I without this person?" because in a strange way, two people have died.”
― Anna Marie Riley, In Plain Sight

“When human beings lack a sense of identity, they often do apparently pointless things, simply to give themselves a sense of existence-through-action; this could explain the apparently aimless mischief of the poltergeist.”
― Colin Wilson, Poltergeist!

“I don’t know how to end a war I was born into;
how to end a conflict and a fight that I don’t understand even the people say I am on their side;
What is the wrong one and how can I end this?”
― Laura Chouette

“My body was a wax shell. A frozen thing. I could move, but I didn’t belong in it. I was watching myself collapse.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“Detaching our identities from the work we can do and the pain we endure creates something of an identity crisis.”
― Jasmine Marie, Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom

“Elara's voice, tight with desperation, cracked as she confided, "I'm trying to balance it all, sœur de mon cœur" [ sister of my heart]. The endearment, a subconscious plea, hung in the air – a lifeline tossed in hopes of finding understanding. "The coven, Declan... Ma Déesse- My Goddess, I don't want to choose, non, and I honestly don't know if I can, you see." She wrung her hands. "It's like... like trying to hold the moon and the bayou in the same hands, tu comprends- you understand? Both are so deeply a part of me, hein? Ingrained in who I am, woven into the tapestry of my soul. The coven is my heritage, my family, my duty. Mais Declan... Declan il est mon autre moitié.” [he is my other half] Her voice broke again. "I simply cannot bring myself to let either one go – it would be like tearing myself in half, mon ami.”
― Alexis Marie LaRue, Under The Blood Moon

“Él está enamorado. Ahora su destino es otro. Las cosas cambiaron. Se lo jura a sí mismo, como si se lo jurase a otro, el otro, ese que anoche estuvo con la joven. Y ese otro es tan distinto al sumiso que se apura por esta avenida hacia el subte.”
― Guillermo Saccomanno, El oficinista

“Le gusta pensar que él, a pesar de su carácter manso, puede ser, dada la circunstancia, feroz. Si se le presentara la circunstancia, podría ser otro.”
― Guillermo Saccomanno, El oficinista

“Entonces él era otro. Y este que es ahora, al acordarse del otro, tiene la impresión de que el otro no era él sino un antepasado.”
― Guillermo Saccomanno, El oficinista