It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.

Pour la première fois de ma vie, ce "moi" semblait se partager et la découverte d'une telle dualité m'étonnait prodigieusement.

One way to think of this dignity is to equate when you are on the path with unraveling a ball of yarn. You have wound your sense of self so tightly that it's hard to be anything other than you, a big ball of yarn. That's just who you are, not string, or threads, but a ball of yarn.

[H]is mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt.

For in some ways the world was like a shopping centre, and he himself was a doubtful customer, often ineffectual, being talked into buying things he didn't want, things indeed which nobody in their right mind would want to buy.