This is me

Neither prison nor temple of the soul, the body has always been an important refuge of the self. The body cannot be expropriated by another (...) it cannot be plagiarized (...) Its ownership cannot be collectivized, except perhaps during pregnancy. He or she who "has" any one body gets to keep it, enjoy its pleasures, and suffer its breakdown, whatever miracles are at his or her disposal to fix it as it breaks. The body is the passport, the warrant, the seal of one's identity.

"This", said as one firmly pounds one's chest with the flat of one's hands, "is me".

Rita Charon, Chapter 5, "The Pacient, the Body, and the Self", in Narrative Medicine, Honoring the Stories of Illness, 2006, Oxford University Press.