Identity for me is something that has to be played with and explored, and not become complacent about or uninterested in.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Fighting for identity is something that is very much in my life.
Identity has been such an explosive territory for me... so hard, so painful at times.
At some point, when I finished school in Zurich, I suddenly realised that I was nobody. I couldn't find a shape. Everything I was had been invented. Initially, I took it to be a fundamental conflict. But today I find pleasure in accepting that this thing called 'identity' is the true invention. There's no way that it really exists.
The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.
Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter.
I have struggled with identity all my life. It's not like something that just happened last week.
One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about the 'search for identity', and this is said admiringly, as if I meant to encourage such a search.
I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.
There's no such thing as identity: it's something we have to believe in to make life more tolerable.
The thing that keeps me being a performer is my interest in society's obsession with identity, because I'm not sure that I really believe identity exists.