Identity Quote by Neel Burton

“The self,” Blackmore writes, “is just a fleeting impression that arises with each experience and fades away again. . . . There is no inner self,” she…

— Sy Montgomery

“[I]nternalized experiences of selfhood are linked to autobiographical narratives, which are linked to biographies, legal testimonies, and medical case histories, which are linked to…

— Anthony Kenny

“We need to think of the self as a continuum, a steady story over time. The mind is always searching for similarities, associations, repetitions,…

— Siri Hustvedt

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

“The self is simply this subject; it is the story we tell ourselves about our experiences.”

— Lehrer Jonah

“Fiction is what happens inside a writer's head. Reality takes place outside it”

— Barry A. Whittingham

“The self requires a story.”

— André Gide

“The novel is an event in consciousness. Our aim isn't to copy actuality, but to modify and recreate our sense of it. The novelist…

— George Buchanan

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

— Li-Young Lee

“I saw clearly that the idea of the self—of distinction, of me, of an inner and outer—is just an illusion,” he said, “something created…

— Emily Esfahani Smith

One function of the imagination in autobiographical writing is to allow the writer to try out different versions of the self.

— Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty…

— Stephen King