They would have appreciated the whiff of self-invention, too.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Pariah Guy] Reference

Yet the Internet does offer the opportunity for self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Haunted by My Digital Ghosts] Reference

Much of the novel centers around self-invention and reinvention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Away by Amy Bloom: Questions] Reference

She's such an outrageously unique self-invention, she resists classification.    From Wordnik.com.  [Hello, Possums! Dame Edna Spreads Gladdies Everywhere] Reference

This is often the result of self-invention, and Lin was nothing if not self-invented.    From Wordnik.com.  [Linwood] Reference

All the while, he displays a deep understanding of our never-ending quest for self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [GUEST REVIEW - DEATH OF A MEXICAN AND OTHER POEMS] Reference

IF divorce provides opportunities for self-invention, marriage makes no competing cultural claims.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Moral State of Marriage] Reference

Her life-story and her philosophy of self-invention reflect themes that are deep in the American heart.    From Wordnik.com.  [Bob Thompson: Obama's Oprah Problem] Reference

I've written more than once about the American myth of self-invention and what trouble it's gotten us into.    From Wordnik.com.  [BROAD CAST 8 SEPTEMBER 2007: REALITY OR REAL-LITE?] Reference

Traditional forms provide all writers with the benefit of liberation from self-discovery and self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Refutation in verse] Reference

She is beyond the need of anything but self-invention, and this will be her own unique and satisfying pleasure.    From Wordnik.com.  [Adventures in the Arts Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets] Reference

The city celebrates its “cowboy” image — of deterritorialized space, self-invention, nomadism, and insurgency.    From Wordnik.com.  [NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS from Jennifer Siegal | Inhabitat] Reference

As to this: Traditional forms provide all writers with the benefit of liberation from self-discovery and self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Refutation in verse] Reference

At the time, that derivative grandeur turned him into the perfect image-maker for a society in the throes of self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  ['Artist Princes' Painted Germany's Rise and Fall] Reference

But he had the ear, and the vision, and the saving gift for self-invention, to recognize that Liam and Liam only was his name.    From Wordnik.com.  [Elegy for the Executive Director] Reference

In pop, it seems, your legacy is transmitted to yourself, which would echo the American ideal of self-invention — and re-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Indicate precisely what you're trying to say] Reference

It's no surprise that America, land of second chances, fabled site of self-invention, also harbors an endless appetite for self-help.    From Wordnik.com.  [Self-Help: Shattering the Myths] Reference

Race, self-invention, the public vs. the private, political correctness run amok, late-in-life love: these are just a few of the themes.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Different Kind Of Skin Flick] Reference

It's a tool for self-expression and self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Refinery29] Reference

Her habit of self-invention seems to have begun early.    From Wordnik.com.  [Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph] Reference

They raised us with this borrowed heritage of self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [NPR Topics: News] Reference

His is a narrative of mixed races, a missing father and self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Guardian World News] Reference

A zany man whose talent for self-invention rivale d that of P.T. Barnum.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life in an Awkward Position] Reference

America is the nation of self-invention, and the Golden State is a realm of extremes.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Memphis Daily News] Reference

There is nothing natural about it, and being an artist has long been an act of self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Guardian World News] Reference

All are self-invented figures, consciously or otherwise, and self-invention is their best creative act.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Guardian World News] Reference

Identity is the child of birth, but at the end, it's self-invention, and not an inheritance of the past.    From Wordnik.com.  [Kottu] Reference

Zhang Wuben story, Zhang's capacity for self-invention would have ranked him among the finest of American hucksters.    From Wordnik.com.  [The New Yorker] Reference

Look was concerned with that century's backstory, the often strange and slapdash narratives of self-invention that populated its streets.    From Wordnik.com.  [All Stories | The New York Observer] Reference

The hero of Homer's "Odyssey" is a modern man in ancient times, an eloquent outfoxer whose life is one long, furious act of self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [NYT > Home Page]

But now, Wiki-Scanner threatens another concept that’s even more American than democracy: self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [BROAD CAST 8 SEPTEMBER 2007: REALITY OR REAL-LITE?] Reference

It was very conducive to thinking about selfhood, and self-invention. ".    From Wordnik.com.  [The Guardian World News] Reference

"In the land that trumpets the pursuit of happiness and the dream of self-invention, his best films �.    From Wordnik.com.  [GreenCine Daily] Reference

His is a story of confident self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph] Reference

He, too, was an elaborate, preposterous self-invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lady Gaga and Liberace: Separated at Birth?] Reference

It is a "land of self-invention, where no one bats an eye at a mom-deckhand-governor-whatever-comes-next.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Firedoglake] Reference