Quotes About Individuality

But some people don't want you to do what you think is right. Some people want you to do what they think is right. Anyway,

we weren't put here on earth to take care of each other. And that it's silly to get mad at someone for letting you down when they're just being who they are. She said it's like getting mad at your dog for not being a cat." Then

It flitted through her mind without actual words that skin is an odd thing for the world to make a fuss about, especially when, with your eyes closed, it all feels more or less the same. "Over

My name is Wilhelmina," she said, "but call me Willie. I like it much better. I hate the name Wilhelmina.

When my parents called "lights out," I was the kid under the covers, finishing my book quietly by flashlight. This is passion that can't be taught. Encouraged. But not taught.

How would I even know that, Lucas? I have no idea if how I feel is what other people would call okay. I'm just the way I've always been.

What I think I should do is more important to me than what you think

Some forms of instruction seem to assume that the concept of the parent or the teacher can be fully captured in words and then transplanted, through the ears of the hearers, into their minds. This view of instruction sets the stage for failure. As adults, we can give children content—information and experiences—as material with which they can build understandings, but each child must construct his or her own concepts.

For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end.

And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.

I do not want to be human. I want to be myself. They think I'm a lion, that I will chase them. I will not deny that I have lions in me. I am the monster in the wood. I have wonders in my house of sugar. I have parts of myself I do not yet understand. I am not a Good Robot. To tell a story about a robot who wants to be human is a distraction. There is no difference. Alive is alive. There is only one verb that matters: to be .

No matter how mad, bad, and dangerous to know a civilization gets, unto every generation are born the lonely and the uncool, destined to forever stare into the candy-store window of their culture, and loneliness is the mother of ascension. Only the uncool have the requisite alone time to advance their species.

There is no such thing as a people who are all wicked or even all good. Everyone chooses. But even they, even they looked at people and saw only tools. No one is a cup for another to drink from.

Hats change everything. September knew this with all her being, deep in the place where she knew her own name, and that her mother would still love her even though she hadn't waved goodbye. For one day her father had put on a hat with golden things on it and suddenly he hadn't been her father anymore, he had been a soldier, and he had left. Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.

It is not so easy to always remember who you are.

Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. But that does not mean that no other countries exist.

Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.

Don't you ever feel like you're just a story someone is telling about someone like you?

Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day.

Everybody is bizarre and disgusting and interesting and fixated on fetishes they wouldn't admit to their grandmother on pain of vaporization and worthy of love. You are bizarre and disgusting and interesting and fixated on fetishes you wouldn't admit to your grandmother on pain of vaporization and worthy of love.

Rules are for those who can't think of a better way.

What was a person, if not the things they knew and the face they wore?

A Fairy must make her own way in the world, for the world will never make way for her. That, incidentally, is the First Theorem of Questing Physicks, which you'll learn all about when you're older and don't care anymore.