identity
In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable—which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.
Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 197.
Your habits reflect your identity, so if you struggle to change a particular habit, re-think your identity.
pre-publication notes for her forthcoming book Better Than Before.
Perhaps what’s most remarkable about the nom de plume, and rarely talked about, is its power to unlock creativity—and its capacity to withhold it. Even when its initial adoption is utilitarian, a pen name can assume a life of its own. Many writers have been surprised by the intimate and even disorienting relationships they have formed with their alter egos.
“The Rise and Fall of Pseudonyms,” The New York Times, June 24, 2011.
It was like the classic scene in the movies where one lover is on the train and one is on the platform and the train starts to pull away, and the lover on the platform begins to trot along and then jog and then sprint and then gives up altogether as the train speeds irrevocably off. Except in this case I was all the parts: I was the lover on the platform, I was the lover on the train. And I was also the train.
A Gate at the Stairs (New York: Random House, 2009), 211.
He’d lost track of what he wanted, and since who a person was was what a person wanted, you could say that he’d lost track of himself.
The Corrections (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 539.
I wish you knew me before I was like this.
“New York is Killing Me,” by Alex Wilkinson, The New Yorker, August 9, 2010, 26–32.
I want my place! my own place! my true place in the world! my proper sphere! my thing to do, which nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my lifetime!
“The Intelligence Office,” in Mosses from an Old Manse Vol 2 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1882), 365.
It’s our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (New York: Scholastic, 1999), 333.
Birthday resolution: From now on specialize; never again make any concession to the ninety-nine parts of you which are like everybody else at the expense of the one which is unique.
The Unquiet Grave (New York: Persea Books, 1981), 95.
In the age of Google, when everything you say is forever searchable, the future belongs to those who leave no footprints.
“Can We Talk?,” The New York Times, July 16, 2010.
The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people’s faces, because that’s the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.
“New York is Killing Me,” by Alex Wilkinson, The New Yorker, August 9, 2010, 26–32.
Sometimes the thing that’s weird about you is the thing that’s cool about you.
“My Deathless Passion for Dracula,” The New York Times, July 2, 2010.