It teaches that a man defines himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses.

whatever the outcome of cultural conventions and conditioning may be, if we take the sense of self that is implicit in them to be an absolute and immortal truth, oblivious to the cultural contexts that give it substance and significance, we are likely to become as confused as we would be if we aspired to meet a fictional character from a film in

For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.