We all feel that we have to perform this version of ourselves that knows the script, that, as you said, is commanding and decisive and desirable, the best public version of ourselves. We're performing that. But actually the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge.
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The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for an audience; and the more candidly he writes, the more intimately he is addressing his reader.
Cyril Connolly — Enemies of Promise
Asian American culture is probably destined to be a sort of transitory, ephemeral thing. The classic second generation experience — 'My parents really drove me hard and kids made fun of my weird lunch, until I went to college and met other people with the same background' — almost never lasts beyond the second generation. Assimilation happens.
Noah Smith
Let no one think it is an easy way because it is concerned with moments of happiness rather than with stern duty or high moral endeavour. For what is really easy, as I found, is to blind one's eyes to what one really likes, to drift into accepting one's wants ready-made from other people, and to evade the continual day to day sifting of values. And finally, let no one undertake such an experiment who is not prepared to find himself more of a fool than he thought.
Marion Milner