That, I decided, was what it meant to be a slave: your past didn't matter, in the present you were invisible and you had no claim on the future.

When history disappears, you disappear.

Our privileges are the things not within our own control that push us forward and move us ahead from that starting line. Acknowledging them does not mean you are admitting to doing something to...

In here I'm the guy who can get things for you... outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. I don't think I could make it.

So many people focus on who they will be that they never get around to figuring out who they are.

Denying what you are didn't keep people from knowing what you are. And flaunting it isn't what saved you. Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. And that would be why I asked...

"You're like, both like, Alexander the Great.' 'We can't both be Alexander.' 'Well sometimes I think you're two sides of the same coin, and I'm the metal in between.'"

Life consists of many different stories. A person has not just one but countless life stories that weave in between each other and together create exactly that specific life and that specific human...

We can't help the way we're born. We can't help what we are, only what life we choose to make for ourselves.

It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it's that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable.

What would you say to yourself if you could actually meet a younger you?

When you open to me and I open to you, when we immerse you into me and I into you, when we lose you in me and I in you, Only then am I me and you are you.

You are not made in 'your image'. You are, in fact, made in 'God's image'. Therefore, which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?

If God were to make a million lovely flowers in your image and plant them in a garden with you among them, I would still know you by your scent and by the feel of your petals and by the crazy way you...

To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.

"I'm Razo, a member of Bayern's Own," he said, stopping himself from adding "Loafing is just a hobby of mine." "Bayern's Own? But you're a child." Razo looked up to the sky. "I'm not a child, I'm just...

What's in a name, anyway? That which we call a nose by any other name would still smell.

Basically, everyone thinks -- knows -- how sweet I am. Emma, you threw my sister through hurricane-proof glass.

You don't know what you are.

Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the...

his own will always be seen as different

Ifemelu wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be from the country of people who gave and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could therefore bask in the grace of having given, to be...

I floated. I had been part of something immense, but now I was torn loose. Broken away from the great purpose that had used me as a conduit. Useless. Again.

That she now had a kind of uniform and a set of tools made everything that much easier and much less about her particular feelings, for tasks requiring clothes and accoutrements were by definition...

...watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they would have made of their lives if they had been women. Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete.

You actually don't exist while you're in your bedroom, I say to the dog, so that she knows this important fact. Teenage girls in bedrooms aren't real.

Crap. I thought that picture was you.' He pointed. 'That's not me. That's my mother,' Mal said with a sigh. 'Woah, you really do look like her, you know,' Jay said. 'You two could be twins,' Evie...

I'm a liar. And I can't stop thinking about boys.

She would be no one if that was what it took. No one had no holes inside her.

But how could he admire Joyce's lengthy, libidinal 'yes' so fervently and end up saying 'no' to his own life? I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative...