I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center.

Until the ego dissolves or evolves to become one with our true self, we remain slaves of our own egos.

Wind is on fire' - beautiful words. What causes the fire, what enhances it, and what finally extinguishes it by itself or by bringing in rainclouds, gets identified with it. Do breath and life have the same relationship with each other!

What's in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet.

It is never long before identity is reduced to loyalty.

Alan, you seem to think we won't like you unless you do things just like everyone else. Have you ever thought we might like you because you're different?

Why am I trying to be somebody? I am somebody.

Identity is theft, don’t trust anyone whose state vector hasn’t forked for more than a gigasecond, change is the only constant, et bloody cetera.

I make no apologies for you. After all, each one of us is little more than the meager residue of the infinite unrealized possibilities of our lives.

The nineteenth century, especially the second half of it, was a time of restatement in Ireland. After the famine, after the failed rebellions of the Forties and Sixties, the cultural and political desires for self-determination began to shape each other in a series of riffs on independence and identity.