Quotes about Identity

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind

Memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human.

I can change nearly everything about myself. I can run from my children and trade in my spouse, move to another country and raise green rabbits for a living, but unless I care for my soul, I will not have changed who I am.

The hand or foot, when separated from the body, retains indeed its name, but totally changes its nature, because it is completely divested of its uses and of its powers.

My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.

I think a good comedian was probably bullied a little bit. Probably felt doughy and oblong and rhombus-shaped and strange and a little bit of an outsider, and then learned the healing qualities of comedy.

As African American, gay drag queens, we live with more adversity and challenges.

By the time I finished 'Poison,' the New Queer Cinema was branded, and I was associated with this. In many ways, it formed me as a filmmaker, like as a feature filmmaker I never set out to be.

I think as queer people, we were very used to accommodating.

Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.