Identity Quote by Brane Smallwood

“the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page”

— Peter Ackroyd

“I find myself drawn to literature more now than in the past; not the individual works as much as the idea of literature—the heroic…

— Ruth Ozeki

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

— Charles Horton Cooley

“the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page”

— Peter Ackroyd

“I think people are often quite unaware of their inner selves, their other selves, their imaginative selves, the selves that aren’t on show in…

— Jeannette Winterson

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

— Leo Rosten

The self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself, within yourself.

— Ramana Maharshi

Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave. The self is a…

— James Gleick

“We must find ourselves in fiction”

— Anonymous

“Aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in…

— Harold Bloom

“If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism.”

— Terry Eagleton

I have this belief that we are so vulnerable when we open ourselves up to literature. We're reminded of these real parts of ourselves.

— Tracy K. Smith