Theme
Who are we? Lines on selfhood, masks, and the gap between who we are and who others see.
“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
— The Third Notebook (Aphorisms) (1918)
One of Kafka's Zürau aphorisms, written while recovering from tuberculosis at his sister's farmhouse. The inversion — the cage seeking the bird — captures his lifelong sense of purposeless confinement.
“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”
— The Metamorphosis (1915)
The opening line of Kafka's most famous novella. Its matter-of-fact tone in the face of the impossible is the quintessential Kafkaesque move — the horror is not the transformation, but how ordinary everyone treats it.
“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
— Diaries (1913)
From Kafka's personal diaries. A rare moment of creative confidence from a writer plagued by self-doubt, urging uncompromising fidelity to one's inner vision.
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
— The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
From the novel's opening chapter. Basil Hallward reveals the autobiographical nature of all art — the creator cannot help but expose themselves.
“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
— Remark to US customs, as reported by newspapers (1882)
Reportedly said at New York customs on his 1882 American lecture tour. Whether apocryphal or not, the line became inseparable from Wilde's public persona.
“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
— Mrs Dalloway (1925)
The novel's famous opening line. In a single sentence Woolf establishes character, class, agency, and the ordinary beauty of a June morning in London.
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
— A Room of One's Own (1929)
Woolf's defiant response to the exclusion of women from the libraries at Oxford and Cambridge. Institutional gatekeeping cannot contain thought.
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.”
— To the Lighthouse (1927)
Mrs Ramsay's moment of solitary respite. Woolf captures the deep need for a self that exists apart from social roles — the luxury of simply being.
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
— Monday or Tuesday (1921)
From the essay "An Unwritten Novel." A compressed statement of the social self as captivity — others' perceptions constrain us as effectively as walls.
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.”
— Notes from Underground (1864)
The Underground Man's perverse insight. Dostoyevsky anticipates Freud by decades — humans don't simply avoid pain; they sometimes actively court it.
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
— Crime and Punishment (1866)
Razumikhin's defense of individual conscience over herd morality. A core Dostoyevskian theme — authentic error beats borrowed virtue.
“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
— Attributed (various interviews)
Hemingway's death-awareness runs through all his fiction. The universality of death makes the particularities of living the only thing that matters.
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
— As You Like It (1599)
Jaques's famous speech in Act II. The theatrum mundi metaphor — life as performance — becomes Shakespeare's commentary on identity as a series of roles.
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
— Romeo and Juliet (1597)
Juliet's argument that names are arbitrary labels. The line challenges the idea that identity is fixed by social categories — love should transcend naming.
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”
— Walden (1854)
Disorientation as the precondition for self-knowledge. Thoreau values the moments when familiar landmarks disappear and you're forced to navigate by internal compass.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
— Walden (1854)
From the "Conclusion" chapter. Thoreau's defense of nonconformity — marching out of step is not failure but fidelity to a rhythm others can't hear.
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
— Wuthering Heights (1847)
Catherine Earnshaw on Heathcliff. Not romantic love in the conventional sense but something more elemental — a claim of ontological identity between two people.
“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
— Wuthering Heights (1847)
The fuller version of Catherine's declaration. The beloved is not an other but a more authentic version of the self — love as self-recognition.
“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”
— Wuthering Heights (1847)
Catherine describes dreams that permanently transform consciousness. Brontë captures the way certain experiences — dreams, loves, losses — don't just happen to us but change what we are.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
— Pride and Prejudice (1813)
The most famous opening line in English fiction after "Call me Ishmael." Austen's irony is surgical — the "universal truth" is really the neighbourhood's mercenary wish.
“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”
— Emma (1815)
Austen on social context shaping moral judgment. Identical acts are read differently depending on who performs them — a sharp observation of class dynamics.
“I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church.”
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Stephen Dedalus's declaration of independence. Joyce — through Stephen — rejects every institutional claim on the individual: family, nation, religion.
“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
— Ulysses (1922)
Leopold Bloom's reflection. The paradox of evasion — what you flee from is what you carry. Joyce suggests all journeys are ultimately circular.
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
— Frankenstein (1818)
The creature's warning to Victor. Shelley gives the monster a voice of terrifying clarity — the one who has nothing to lose is the most dangerous of all.
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
— Frankenstein (1818)
Victor's observation after the creature's birth. Shelley identifies the psychological cost of transformation — even desired change devastates the unprepared mind.
“I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
— The Great Gatsby (1925)
Daisy on her newborn daughter. Not cynicism but exhausted realism — Fitzgerald gives Daisy a moment of devastating self-awareness about what the world does to women who see too clearly.
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."”
— The Great Gatsby (1925)
The novel's opening passage. Nick Carraway establishes the moral framework of the book — empathy through awareness of privilege.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
— The Crack-Up (1936)
From Fitzgerald's confessional essay series in Esquire. Written during his breakdown, it's a definition of maturity that doubles as a description of artistic vision.
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Alice after her size changes. Carroll turns a child's confusion into an existential question — identity is not given but constantly renegotiated.
“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Alice on the impossibility of return. Carroll anticipates process philosophy — the self is not a fixed entity but a moving stream. Yesterday's Alice is gone.
“I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”
— Little Women (1868)
Jo March's characteristic directness. Alcott refuses sentimentality in favor of the concrete — flattery is less useful than caffeine.
“Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.”
— An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870)
Alcott's feminist insight: the pedestal is a cage. Being crowned "queen of the home" is not honor but confinement to a diminished domain.