Tilda Swinton Quotes

Writing about identity can be like maneuvering through a minefield, even when considering contemporary figures who have discussed the subject themselves.

The idea is that in any situation, people have a notion as to who they are and how they should behave. And if you don't behave according to your identity, you pay a cost.

I think a bit of mystery is good, and I used to feel like an eccentric person pretending to be normal. But I am actually just a normal person seeming eccentric, by what I'm putting myself through.

You can't get along in society without an identity.

If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.

One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

I think I always resented the fact that people thought I was trying to entertain them with my multifaceted, chameleonlike character changes. Although I liked doing that, I wasn't out to fool people and say 'Guess which one is me.'

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.

The perception of identity is so intimately bound up with the perception of the human form.

My mother helped me identify myself the way the world would identify me. Bloodlines didn't matter as much as how I would be perceived.

I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son.

I tend to see - socially, I don't tend to be myself in a male role. I don't know any other way to put it.

Funny how defined we are by how we present ourselves to the world.

Every human being has an assortment of diverse identities, and it greatly matters which one is triggered by social situations, which hold up different kinds of mirrors. The same is true for nations.

Everyone is so into labeling themselves. I don't really put too much into that.

I have a very healthy dose of scepticism towards what identity is and what personas are, maybe because of my life journey. Identity is something so malleable.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

Normal social behavior requires that we be able to recognize identities in spite of change. Unless we can do so, there can be no human society as we know it.

I think in some ways we have allowed other people to set the agenda. Other people to define who we are.

The role of culture is that it's the form through which we as a society reflect on who we are, where we've been, where we hope to be.

I feel that I'm sort of playing me but more feminine, and to me more feminine means smarter.

I don't believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.

Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience.

If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.