identity quotes

I’m Mickey Mouse. They don’t know who’s inside the suit.

It’s almost schizophrenic who I portray in my music.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

It’s a very strange thing being recognized or looked upon as someone special.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I’m not who I say I am when it comes to my faith – something which I find deeply offensive, and that has been going on for a pretty long time.

Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

I don’t think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.

I’m not who people expect me to be. I’m not Henry Kissinger.

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

By its birth, and for all time, Christianity is pledged to the Cross and dominated by the sign of the Cross. It cannot remain its own self except by identifying itself ever more intensely with the essence of the Cross.

Only Americans can hurt America.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

I am not The Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

This man is frank and earnest with women. In Fresno, he’s Frank and in Chicago he’s Ernest.

The little man is still a man.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

There are some teams and logos you see, no matter where you are in the world, and you know exactly who they are and what they mean.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Jesus isn’t lettin‘ you off the hook. The Scriptures don’t let you off the hook so easily… When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher‘, ‚Prophet‘, ‚Really nice guy‘ … this is not how Jesus thought of Himself.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.

I’m nobody, who are you?