Chang-Rae Lee Quotes

I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.

I'm not going to become a costume version or caricature of myself; I like to morph.

I'm going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That's the one place I can be free. But the reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

I've never, ever labeled myself.

I think I look more like me than my father's daughter now.

Growing up in Wales, there was a lot of fervour about being Welsh. But the more that I travelled, I realised that people aren't always interested in where you're from, but who you are.

I gotta be who I am now. How do you not, right?

I wear my personality on my sleeve, for sure, and my look is constantly changing because so am I.

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.

Becoming yourself is really hard and confusing, and it's a process. It's often not cool to be the person who puts themselves out there.

I'm a perfectly good carrot that everyone is trying to turn into a rose. As a carrot, I have good color and a nice leafy top. When I'm carved into a rose, I turn brown and wither.

Identity has several parts, and the self needs to expand. Black youth should be encouraged to have as many parts or as rich an identity as possible. It's a form of allowing them to be curious about the world.

I wouldn't be myself if I weren't always trying to be someone else. I only have so much time on this earth and I want to be as many people as possible.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

When we're growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be.

To me, the most interesting part of 'True Blood' is that the entire crux of the show is based on identity and finding your true identity.

My personality doesn't interest me.

I think Zippy is part of me, but I'm not Zippy.

My physical transformations - like changing my hair - are usually a reflection of what's inspiring me at the moment.

I'm still my parent's child, I'm still me, but I made a choice. I evolved into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I think it has to do with evolution.

I think skating helped me find myself.

You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.