There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.

This line is spoken by Anne Shirley in L. M. Montgomery’s novel *Anne of Green Gables* (1908), early in Anne’s life at Green Gables on Prince Edward Island. Newly adopted by Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert after a childhood of instability and imagination-fueled solitude, Anne is trying to explain her mercurial moods, intense feelings, and shifting self-presentations. The remark fits Montgomery’s broader portrayal of Anne as a child who narrates her inner life with unusual eloquence, and it reflects the novel’s interest in how identity is formed through temperament, circumstance, and the stories one tells about oneself.

Anne’s “different Annes” names the multiplicity within a single personality: conflicting impulses, roles, and emotional registers that make her seem “troublesome” to more restrained adults. Rather than treating this inner variety as a flaw to be corrected, Anne reframes it as the source of her vividness and creativity—less “comfortable,” but “more interesting.” Montgomery uses Anne’s self-analysis to dignify childhood complexity and to suggest that a rich inner life can be both socially disruptive and personally sustaining. The line also anticipates Anne’s maturation: she will learn to integrate these “Annes” without losing the imaginative spark that defines her.