"We are a process which has its genesis in roles, but grows into a characteristically human combination of self-consciousness and skill. The central self is not a substance but an effect, successful process. [...] We cannot strive for authenticity, for a real self. Like happiness, it seems to come en passant. We act in the world inevitably within a matrix of our own interests. We hope these will yield a genuine self, but no inevitability governs the process."

Richard A. Lanham: The Motives of Eloquence. Literary rhetoric in the Renaissance. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976, p.156