“Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial.”

“I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God.”

“I am who I say I am,I'm not some fantasyof how you think you think you knowor who I ought to be.I am a girl who is growing up in my own sweet time,I am a girl who knows enoughto know this life is mine.I am this and I am that andI am everything in-between.I'm a dreamer, I'm a dancer,I'm a part-time drama queen.I'm a worrier, I'm a warrior,I'm a loner and a friend,I'm an outspoken defenderof justice to the end.I'm the girl in the mirror who likes the girl she sees,I'm the girl in the gypsy shawlwith music in her knees.I'm a singer and a scholar,I'm a girl who has been kissed.I'm a solver of equationswearing bangles on my wrist.I am bigger than i ever knew,I am stronger than before,I am every girl I have ever been,and all that are in store.I am who I say I am.I'm not some fantasy.I am the me I am inside.I am whoI choseto be.”

“I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.”

“I am not my heart rate. I am not my skills. I am not my sleeping problems. I am not my stress. I am not my fears. I am not how I look like. I am the very essence of me. I am my will. I am my passion. I am my beliefs. I am how much I can give and receive love. I am infinite and possible. I am my soul.”

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”