Self Becoming Quotes

We are not defined by the family into which we are born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.

[T]here is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Become it.

What a dazzlingly generous, gloriously unpredictable book! Maggie Nelson shows us what it means to be real, offering a way of thinking that is as challenging as it is liberating. She invites us to 'pay homage to the transitive' and enjoy 'a becoming in which one never becomes.' Reading The Argonauts made me happier and freer.

Whatever it is you are feeling is a perfect reflection of what you are in the process of becoming

What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world - a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things.

Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.

There is nothing settled about a poet's identity. The becoming doesn't stop because the being has been achieved. They proceed together, attached in ways that are hard to be exact about.