Quotes & Sayings About Identity Crisis

Maybe people could fall in love without an identity crisis. — Leah Raeder

The Western world is having an identity crisis. — Marianne Williamson

Christianity is facing something of an identity crisis. Who are we to be to the twenty-first-century world? How should the church position itself in the postmodern culture? Through what cultural languages will the gospel be best communicated in this turbulent time? — Brett McCracken

Becoming an entrepreneur was the furthest thing from my mind. I actually had an identity crisis when I realized I had become one. — Anne Taintor

Elza needed challenges in her life, needed to be occupied. Without walls to climb or windmills to attack she was the type of person who became depressed. She knew this. The feeling lived inside her somewhere - probably nestled close to her solar plexus. Yes, it seemed like that was the case. She felt it right in her chest. So, to escape dwelling on her anxieties - which she was prone to do - Elza lived in a state of perpetual movement. If she slowed down or was obstructed, even for a moment, she would suffer being left alone with herself, and then all would be lost. — Marc Fitten

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new. — Tavi Gevinson

My former identity was lying around, somewhere, fragmented and buried, like shards from an earlier civilization. — Laurie Nadel

I was adopted by a Salvadorian mother and a white father. Growing up having complete identity crisis. Then my search for my mother and trying to find out why I was given up, and how could a mother give up a child, then finding out the circumstances of my birth was pretty traumatizing. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

It's really amazing, isn't it? Someone can trigger your sexual identity crisis and not have a clue they're doing it. — Becky Albertalli

He was going to hell in the old hand basket, and he decided that maybe he would take someone with him. — Thomas F. Monteleone

It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors. — Wynton Marsalis

As a result, one can observe in many agents of evangelization, even though they pray, a heightened individualism, a crisis of identity and a cooling of fervour. These are three evils which fuel one another. — Pope Francis

I have an identity crisis which is not resolved because I'm a dual citizen. My whole family is American, and I was born in India but I was raised in Canada. But all my extended family is American, I've held an American passport and I've spent my whole adult life in between New York and LA. So I feel like an American ... and I also feel like a Canadian! I wish more people were dual citizens and then I wouldn't feel like such a freak. — Emily Haines

A Frenchman, as any Frenchman will tell you, is a difficult condition to abide, as much a privilege as a responsibility. To maintain the appropriate standards of excellence, this superlative of grace, was a burden not so light even in the homeland, and immeasurably more difficult in the colonies. Being both French and a stoat had resulted in a more or less constant crisis of self-identity - one which Bonsoir often worked to resolve, in classic Gallic fashion, via monologue. — Daniel Polansky

I don't think I could ever live with either a man or a woman for a long time. Male and female are attractive to my mind, but when it comes to the sexual act I am afraid. In every situation I need a lot of stimulation before I am conquered by the forces of passion and lust. But confusion, before and after, is the dominant factor.
I dreamed many times about a mature man with experience who would have the vigour of a boy but an adult's polished methods. Strangely enough, I also dreamed about women of my mother's age who were ideal lovers. These dreams came superimposed on one another. Sometimes the masculine element was dominant, sometimes the feminine one. At other times I wasn't sure. I saw a female body with male organs or a male body with female ones. These pictures, blended together in my mind, occasionally brought pleasure but more often pain. — Adam Thirlwell

We are beginning to learn that an empathic moment requires both intimate engagement and a measure of detachment. If our feelings completely spill over into another's feelings or their feelings overwhelm our psyche, we lose a sense of self and the ability to imagine the other as if they were us. Empathy is a difficult balancing act. One has to be open to experiencing another's plight as if it were one's own but not be engulfed by it, at the expense of drowning out the self's ability to be a unique and separate being. Empathy requires a porous boundary between I and thou that allows the identity of two beings to mingle in a shared mental space.
- The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis — Jeremy Rifkin

There is a great identity crisis among students today. Who am I? What is the purpose of life? Where did I come from? Where am I going? The Bible has a direct answer to this great big philosophical question and unless God seals the vacuum among youth today, then some other ideology will, because young people must have a faith. They must believe in something to find fulfillment in their lives. — Billy Graham

Soon the grizzly was joined by a brown bear, a sun bear, and a beaver suffering from an identity crisis of magnificent proportion — Cameron Dokey

I was someone hungry for stories; more specifically, I was someone who craved after facts ... I was, you see, at the start of this tale, a person with history. I had no story of my own. Lacking this, I developed a curiosity about other people's lives. — Arlene J. Chai

How do you eat your roots? — Kamila Shamsie

Slim throws me a startled look. I aim my bolt shooter at him. Who am I, you sonofabitch?
Helluva time for a identity crisis, he says. — Moira Young

Identity seems to be non-existent at a personal level - at best we can end up in a minority, and those who discuss it most are just those people who are aware of its absence in themselves. — Anthony Marais

For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me. — Carolyn Parkhurst

Confidence is not about being self-centered. It's about being emotionally centered, so you can better see other people. — Karen C. Eddington

Materialism is an identity crisis. — Bryant McGill

Time alone helps us to remember who we are. — Fennel Hudson

Bastard children were born from lust and lies, men said; their nature was wanton and treacherous. - Jon Snow — George R R Martin

If you have ever talked about having an "identity crisis" you have psychologist Erik Erikson to thank for inventing the term. Erikson — Tom Butler-Bowdon

Sports journalism is in the midst of an identity crisis so profound that we no longer know whether we're made up of one word or two. — Jane Leavy

Unfortunately, in the north and the south of Ireland, intolerant habits are part of the fabric of emotion, part of the identity crisis which afflicts the population of the country. — Tom Paulin

Am I the girl/ Whose giggle crinkles her big eyes/ Or the woman whose small eyes/ Crinkle her vision? — Mansi Tejpal

It reminded him of the truth - who he really was, and the fact that no matter how far he ran, his past would be right there with him. — Kayla Krantz

The act of migration puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about identity and selfhood and culture and belief. So if this is a novel about migration it must be that act of putting in question. It must perform the crisis it describes. — Salman Rushdie

Throwing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, you're vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B. — Reid Hoffman

Just be yourself. You don't have to put on an act."
"To be myself, I have to put on an act," Ginny said bitterly.
"What's that mean?"
"It means I don't know who I am. — Philip Pullman

The other that will guide you and itself through this dissolution is a rhythm, text, music, and within language, a text. But what is the connection that holds you both together? Counter-desire, the negative of desire, inside-out desire, capable of questioning (or provoking) its own infinite quest. Romantic, filial, adolescent, exclusive, blind and Oedipal: it is all that, but for others. It returns to where you are, both of you, disappointed, irritated, ambitious, in love with history, critical, on the edge and even in the midst of its own identity crisis; a crisis of enunciation and of the interdependence of its movements, an instinctual drive that descends in waves, tearing apart the symbolic thesis. — Julia Kristeva

Identity was just a box people liked to put themselves in, a mast to tether to in a storm, a security blanket. — Leonardo Donofrio

Our sexual fantasies are often redundant and intense, like many other ideas involving ourselves. Most people approach sexuality limited to the idea that they should imitate other people, art (e.g., romantic literature) or movies (e.g., pornography). In this way, vicarious events and even fictions become a point of reference that we can actually feel. We judge actual people in our real lives against fictional events and unrealistic concepts. As such, real lovers seem inferior as a result. — Todd Vickers

Travelling, he'd always thought, was where he'd meet his other self. Somewhere in a foreign place, he would bump into the bit of himself which was lost. — Monique Roffey

I really feel sorry for new generation. It's hard to find backbone. I never had crisis of identity. But I think many Americans have it. — Natalia Makarova

It was an identity crisis. I was born and raised in France, but I never really felt French, so I needed to find something that I was more connected to. I used to go back to Tunisia every summer, but I was more into the language, my Arabic roots. — EL Seed

The core problem isn't the fact that we're lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of
God. We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way. We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He's great and deserves to be the center of our lives. — Francis Chan

Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him. — Meg Rosoff

Right after 'Raymond' I had a world-is-my-oyster attitude, but I found out I don't like oysters. I had this existential emptiness. 'What is my purpose? Who am I?' I had a big identity crisis. — Ray Romano

It's a remarkable experience to ask yourself identity-crisis questions from a comic book movie with a mostly straight face, but I don't recommend it. — Jonathan Talat Phillips

Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. — Clarice Lispector

I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just so strong and realistic like. And so I thought, Well, if this dream comes true, how can I stop it, you know? How can I change things, you know? So I thought if I, like pierced my ear or something, like alter my physical image, dye my hair, the world wouldn't melt. So I dyed my hair and this pink lasts. I like it. It lasts. I don't feel like the world is gonna melt anymore. — Bret Easton Ellis

It's time to accept that I am average, and to stop making this acceptance of my averageness into a bereavement. — Sara Baume

I don't know where I belong, so I'm free. No one's got a hold on me. — Philip Pullman

I'm a stranger in my own life. — Lang Leav

There was no identity crisis in the life of Jesus Christ. He knew who He was. He knew where He had come from, and why he was here. And he knew where He was going. And when you are that liberated, then you can serve. — Howard G. Hendricks

When we do not know our true identity as powerful creators, we are susceptible to being used and manipulated. — Bryant McGill

Women's liberation and the male midlife crisis were the same search
for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, love. But while women's liberation was thought of as promoting identity, the male midlife crisis was thought of as an identity crisis. — Warren Farrell

I've suffered from an identity crisis my entire life. It's why I went into acting. — Matthew Rhys

Let's just say that drama became something very real to me that day, she said. It ceased to be theoretical, was no longer an internal structure in which she could hide and look out on the wold. In a sense, her work had jumped out of a bush and attacked her.

I said it seemed to me that at a certain point a lot of people felt that, not about work but about life itself. — Rachel Cusk

So also in a marriage or in helping a teenager through a difficult identity crisis - there is no quick fix, where you can just move in and make everything right with a positive mental attitude and a bunch of success formulas. — Stephen Covey

The film is about Joe discovering who his mother and father are and his relationship with them, and the identity crisis he goes through once he finds out who his parents are. — Christopher Eccleston

There's no point pretending to be someone or something we're not. — Fennel Hudson

Narratives are the primary way in which we make sense of our lives, as opposed to, for example schema,cognition, beliefs, constructs. Definition of narrative include the important element of giving meaning to events and experiences over time by connecting them as a developing, continuing story. — Jacqui Stedmon

The moment when mortality, ephemerality, uncertainty, suffering, or the possibility of change arrives can split a life in two. Facts and ideas we might have heard a thousand times assume a vivid, urgent, felt reality. We knew them then, but they matter now. They are like guests that suddenly speak up and make demands upon us; sometimes they appear as guides, sometimes they just wreck what came before or shove us out the door. We answer them, when we answer, with how we lead our lives. Sometimes what begins as bad news prompts the true path of a life, a disruptive visitor that might be thanked only later. Most of us don't change until we have to, and crisis is often what obliges us to do so. Crises are often resolved only through anew identity and new purpose, whether it's that of a nation or a single human being. — Rebecca Solnit

Forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. ... Do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that's an investment in who you might want to be next. — Meg Jay

Repentance, rebirth, and conversion were exchanged for cheap grace, and the integrity of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus faded. People join the church in droves, but Christian disciples were hard to come by. Christianity had an identity crisis.
It's the same old story of the forbidden fruit
it's the beautiful things that get us. It's the things that seem good, but are not quite of God, that steer us off the course of holiness into destructiveness. — Shane Claiborne

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to keep promises to God, to self and to one's relationships that consistently express one's identity and values in spiritually and emotionally healthy ways. Relational congruence is about both constancy and care at the same time. It is about both character and affection, and self-knowledge and authentic self-expression. Relational congruence is the leader's ability to cultivate strong, healthy, caring relationships; maintaining healthy boundaries; and communicating clear expectations, all while staying focused on the mission. — Tod Bolsinger

I can see that in retrospect but I guess I've always had such an identity crisis when it comes to other people's understanding of me. — Jamie Lidell

After 'A Good Day to Die Hard,' I had a bit of an identity crisis as far as where I wanted to place myself in the business. When it's all new and fresh, there is a lot of pressure to know what you represent, and I didn't really get that. — Jai Courtney

Perhaps - and this was her most persistent thought, the thought that stayed with her and came suddenly to trouble her at odd moments, and to comfort her - suppose, actually, she were not Natalie Waite, college girl, daughter to Arnold Waite, a creature of deep lovely destiny; suppose she were someone else? — Shirley Jackson

Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes ... Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism , and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence. — E. O. Wilson

I never felt like I had anything really figured out. When I was a teenager, it was all about teenagers having an 'identity crisis.' That was the phrase that was used. But in my early 20s, I was still like, 'When am I going to be over that?' — Kim Gordon

Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that? — Kathryn Schulz

Everything I touch makes me a little bit more like the thing I'm touching, so I'd better start paying attention to what I'm touching. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity.
- Through the Gates of the Silver Key — H.P. Lovecraft

She was returning home to be the wife of, mother of, First Lady of, but what did that really mean? — Stacy Hawkins Adams

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old. — Sara Zarr

Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Identity was a liquid state, ever interchangeable, and adaptable to its surroundings... It was better to not have favourites - a snake didn't mourn when it had to shed its skin. — Leonardo Donofrio

But there was a special kind of gift that came with embracing the chaos, even if I cursed most of the way. I'm convinced that, when everything is wiped blank, it's life 's way of forcing you to become acquainted with and aware of who you are now, who you can become. What is the fulfillment of your soul? — Jennifer DeLucy

It's just like I get this identity crisis: my body doesn't want to write, my mind doesn't want to write. Nothing about me wants to write, but I force myself to sit there and try. Nothing happens. — Luke Temple

In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning-point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening. — Nikolai Berdyaev

And yet, despite this portrait of a self assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing. — Imbolo Mbue

Corvina must have been so different then ... really literally a different person. At what point do you make that call? At what point should you just give someone a new name? Sorry, no, you don't get to be Corvina anymore. Now you're Corvina 2.0 - a dubious upgrade. — Robin Sloan

I've never been a fan of personality-conflict burgers and identity-crisis omelets with patchouli oil. I function very well on a diet that consists of Chicken Catastrophe and Eggs Overwhelming and a tall, cool Janitor-in-a-Drum. I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station. — Tom Waits

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis. — Josh Hutcherson

I went to the club to escape my life and pretend I'm somebody else. Now I don't know who I am anymore. — E. Leo Foster

You can either follow your dreams or adjust with your society's expectations ... Either way, consequences are uncertain ... the path to glory or the boulevard of mediocrity, both lead to the grave ... Choose what's worthwhile, for the end is the same. — K. Hari Kumar

Our identity has already been chosen for us; but it is up to us to accept it, or fight and change it. — Afnan Ahmad Mia

It was as if my sould had left my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching me destroy my own career with one deliberately assaultive punch. (Dark City Lights) — Peter Hochstein

We should be authentic: the 'real deal'. Neither a clone nor mimic be. — Fennel Hudson

There is a saying that 'the psychotic drowns in the waters that the mystic swims in.' The health and structural integrity of the ego means the difference between spiritual emergence, the unfolding of a transpersonal identity; and a spiritual emergency a crisis brought on by the same unfolding, during which the foundations of sanity can be shaken. — Jason Kirkey

It's bad timing, but a lot of kids become teenagers just as their parents are hitting their mid-life crisis. So everybody's miserable and confused and seeking that new sense of identity. — Laurie Halse Anderson

We usually don't realize the thing that is defining our identity until that thing is taken away. — Tim Hiller

When I started acting, it was like a double identity crisis - your basic crisis, compounded by people saying, 'there goes Robards' kid, Bacall's kid.' Now I realize, sure, that gets your foot in the door, but once it's there, it's your foot. I'm not bothered anymore. I'm confident of my abilities. — Sam Robards

For two thousand years, the closer to Carthage (roughly the site of modern-day Tunis) the greater the level of development. Because urbanization in Tunisia started two millennia ago, tribal identity based on nomadism - which the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun said disrupted political stability - is correspondingly weak. Indeed, after the Roman general Scipio defeated Hannibal in 202 B.C. outside Tunis, he dug a demarcation ditch, or fossa regia, that marked the extent of civilized territory. The fossa regia remains relevant to the current Middle East crisis. Still visible in places, it runs from Tabarka on Tunisia's northwestern coast southward, and turns directly eastward to Sfax, another Mediterranean port. The — Robert D. Kaplan

Broke up created a crisis ... in every circumstance because a family gets blown apart. We all know what that does to a child. We all know what that does to a woman's identity. But, at the same time, it caused me to start to reevaluate all those things weren't able to stay intact - all the people's attention, all the success, the financial security. It didn't have any value. — Patricia Mauceri

Symptomatic of this rural-urban identity crisis is our eager embrace of a recently imposed divide: the Red States and the Blue States. That color map comes to us with the suggestion that both coasts are populated by educated civil libertarians, while the vast middle and south are criss-crossed with the studded tracks of ATVs leaving a trail of flying beer cans and rebel yells. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. But I certainly sense a bit of that when urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, "so far from everything?" (When I hear this question over the phone, I'm usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.) — Barbara Kingsolver