If Beale Street Could Talk quotes about identity

Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

They looked at us as though we were zebras – and, you know, some people like zebras and some people don’t. But nobody ever asks the zebra.

We don’t know enough about ourselves. I think it’s better to know that you don’t know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you.

The world sees what it wishes to see, or, when the chips are down, what you tell it to see: it does not wish to see who, or what, or why you are.

I don’t know, sir. But it’s old enough to know who you love.

It’s astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body – the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. It means that you have a body, too. You will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.

The mind is like an object that picks up dust. The object doesn’t know, any more than the mind does, why what clings to it clings.

They were so free that they believed in nothing; and didn’t realize that this illusion was their only truth and that they were doing exactly as they had been told.

I got two things in my life, man – I got my wood and stone and I got Tish. If I lose them, I’m lost. I know that.