I Contain Multitudes Whitman Quotes

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I am large, I contain multitudes

I am large ,I contain multitudes

I am large, I contain multitudes. —WALT WHITMAN

Ironically, the tattoo represents the opposite for me today. It reminds me that it's important to let yourself be vulnerable, to lose control and make a mistake. It reminds me that, as Whitman would say, I contain multitudes and I always will. I'm a level-one introvert who headlined Madison Square Garden—and was the first woman comic to do so. I'm the ‘overnight success’ who's worked her ass off every single waking moment for more than a decade. I used to shoplift the kind of clothing that people now request I wear to give them free publicity. I'm the SLUT or SKANK who's only had one one-night stand. I'm a ‘plus-size’ 6 on a good day, and a medium-size 10 on an even better day. I've suffered the identical indignities of slinging rib eyes for a living and hustling laughs for cash. I'm a strong, grown-ass woman who's been physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by men and women I trusted and cared about. I've broken hearts and had mine broken, too. Beautiful, ugly, funny, boring, smart or not, my vulnerability is my ultimate strength. There's nothing anyone can say about me that's more permanent, damaging, or hideous than the statement I have forever tattooed upon myself. I'm proud of this ability to laugh at myself—even if everyone can see my tears, just like they can see my dumb, senseless, whack, lame lower back tattoo.

Is it always “or”? Is it never “and”? —STEPHEN SONDHEIM, INTO THE WOODS Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) —WALT WHITMAN, “SONG OF MYSELF

I sometimes find myself lost in the paradoxes of place, race, and religion. Oklahoma seems to embody Walt Whitman's famous lines: 'Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.

I contain multitudes

Do I contradict myself?
 Very well then I contradict myself, 
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I contain multitudes.

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who am I? Everybody. As Whitman said: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Individuals within that multitude are always flickering on and off within me, stepping forward, then receding. And these individuals resemble the individuals who flicker on and off within you. This is the idea on which fiction is built.

But when I became a published poet, I couldn’t suspend my Asian female identity no matter what I wrote. Even in the absence of my body, my spectral authorial identity hampered the magnitude and range in which my voice reached readers. How naïve to think that my invisibility meant I could play God! If Whitman’s I contained multitudes, my I contained 5.6 percent of this country. Readers, teachers, and editors told me in so many words that I should write whatever felt true to my heart but that since I was Asian, I might as well stick to the subject of Asians, even though no one cared about Asians, but what choice did I have since if I wrote about, say, nature, no one would care because I was an Asian person writing about nature?

Do I contradict myself? Very well then…. I contradict myself; I am large…. I contain multitudes.

Though I fiercely wanted people to be one thing and not two for simplicity's sake, people - as Walt Whitman wrote - contain multitudes.

Forget Orson Welles, and heed Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.

We are like the flower. Every one of us is a miraculous flower in the garden of humanity. If you look deeply into yourself, you will see that you possess everything. As the poet Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” The one contains all—