John le Carre Quotes

...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.

There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?

When people have asked me in the past if I'm gay, I've said "I'm not gay, but I'm festive."

People who have gone, are still here, in us. Places we came from, are carried to the places we go.

The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.

Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it's something that's reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It's not because I don't like my given name; it's that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is - you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.

People want to be famous, they want to be loved, they want to be accepted. They want to push aside their past and the things that have been embarrassing to them.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.

Sometimes we say we want an end to hate or racism or sexism. But we all participate in keeping these structures alive. If everyone decided to relinquish the past what would happen to people who feel that there hasn't been proper atonement made to them? And what happens to the person who feels that the constant atonement is their identity?

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

If our planet has seen some eighty billion people it is difficult to suppose hat every individual has had his or her own repertory of gestures. Arithmetically, it is simply impossible. Without the slightest doubt, there are far fewer gestures in the world than there are individuals. That finding leads us to a shocking conclusion: a gesture is more individual than an individual. We could put it in the form of an aphorism: many people, few gestures.

You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place.

Meg, when people don't know who they are, they are open either to being Xed, or Named

What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.

To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

We fell in love with different people. Looking back, we might have done it in a different order, but we got invested. We really wanted to do the flashbacks because we wanted to explore who these women were on the outside versus the inside, and get a fuller picture of the masks we wear.

There is no future for a people who deny their past.

People have multiple identities.

I always let other people describe me because if I describe myself you will not understand.

People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.

People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.

There are many people who could claim and learn from their Indian ancestry, but because of the fear their parents and grandparents knew, because of past and present prejudice against Indian people, that part of their heritage is clouded or denied.

What we make of people, and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, what memories we have, and whether our loyalties are to the past, the present or the future.

I don't think sexuality defines a person. It's one small part of who you are, in my view. You are many things, and I never felt that people were defined by their sexuality solely.

I've always wanted a normal life, and this is what I got. Being an actress wasn't a plan at all, so what's happened to me is very strange. Life isn't very normal, even though I'm still very much a normal girl. I ride the subway, I ride the bus, and all of that. It's the people around me that have changed. I love when I go to a restaurant and I walk past, and everyone waves. That's always really funny. It's strange. It just goes to show that whatever plan you have for your life, you are wrong, a lot of times.