Multifaceted Identity Quotes

I've never allowed my political life, or my life as a basketball player, to define the totality of my humanity or my personality.

I come from a Muslim family. The label 'Muslim' is one aspect of me, but it's not the only part of me.

I'm a basketball player. That's what I do and what I love but that's just not all who I am. I'm talented in a lot of different areas.

When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.

I don't think of people as out-and-out black or white.

I am 32 flavors and then some.

I'm bi-lots of things but lingual isn't one of them. Wait, did I mean to say that?

The statement is that 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.

When I started in the theater, the joy for me was playing different parts, and I get set alight by different people and different worlds. The biggest joy for me is jumping around and going from that to this to that, never feeling that I'm any one thing - because I'm not, and we as people aren't.

I don't feel as if I'm typecast - like any writer, the difficulty is that one facet of my identity becomes louder, obscuring the fact that I'm also a woman, a writer, a lover of pop culture and other things.

Some people might say I'm two different people, but I think it's more like seven or eight.

I always think about race as a part of one's identity, not the whole of one's identity. You don't want it to be the defining characteristic of a character. There has to be more.

Even with whatever people want to label me with, there are so many other sides to me.

People know there's more than one side to me. You can have beauty and brains and athletic ability. You can switch up the cleats for heels once in a while. You can do both.

I love and collect contemporary art and go to all the art fairs. I love Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney. I grew up in Italy and had a humanistic education in philosophy and literature - things I love and appreciate. People are richer and more complex than just their day-to-day professional pursuits might suggest.

Women somehow get portrayed as one type. You're either a feminist or you're not. You're a working woman or you're not. I'm raising two girls, and I say to them, 'I need you to be strong and soft. You can be smart and beautiful... You can be all of these things.'

I am not a woman on Monday, an immigrant on Tuesday, a worker on Wednesday, and a mom on Thursday, I am all of those things all of the time, and I am going to fight for all of those things all of the time.

One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self - definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened.

I always wanted, and still aspire, to be something more than just one thing, just one performance.

You can’t bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello. The shopping mall, the urinal, the discotheque. I’m hardly speaking in metaphor. It’s the most impermeable of cities. How does one convey all that?

The film I do doesn't have to be a film that only my kids can watch. My kids will watch films, but I will decide what they watch and not. My aim is to play different characters and not be stuck in a mould. Just because you are a mom and a wife doesn't meant you have to play those roles, even in films.

I think that all people are many people. I think all people have many, many, many different souls inside, and they just shift from one to the other.

You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms.

I like to hoop but I don't want to be remembered for one thing, like 'oh he just plays basketball.'

Who's to say because you're just a basketball player, or you are a basketball player, who's to say you can't chime in on other subjects or other important topics?