“If I am a tower, then I name myself with the knowledge that I will be dispersed, not that I will cohere. Any name can be destroyed, can destroy itself. My value is not in my permanence but in the resilience with which I recover, and re-cover, and re-form after the deluge. I know myself only insofar as I know that I will always surprise myself, that ‘I’ will collapse and be scrambled whenever I think my own structure is sound...when the deluge comes I will be washed away, nameless” -A Year Without A Name


 "Sometimes you have a name, sometimes you are named for what—not who—you are. The story always looks a little different, depending on who is telling it...whatever names me, breaks me" -In the Dream House 

“There’s power in naming yourself, in proclaiming to the world that this is who you are...Becoming comfortable with your identity is step one; the next step is revealing that identity to those around you” -Redefining Realness 


"The ambiguity that name changes allow—maybe the person is exactly who the reader thinks they are, maybe they aren't" -Another Appalachia 


"Once we name something, you said, we can never see it the same way again. All that is unnameable falls away, gets lost, is murdered" -The Argonauts 


“If this wasn’t love, what was it? Who was I? And why couldn’t I speak up for it, call it by name?” -My Autobiography of Carson McCullers 

“Because if we couldn’t name it to ourselves, what would we have said?” -My Autobiography of Carson McCullers