Self Identity Crisis Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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