Quotes About Individuality

Ma mentre trovavo loro una casa nella sezione "saggistica d'arte e letteratura" (personalmente trovo che agli scopi domestici il sistema di archiviazione Trivial Pursuit funzioni meglio del Dewey), d'un tratto ho avuto una piccola epifania: tutti i libri che possediamo, letti e no, sono l'espressione più piena che abbiamo a disposizione della nostra personalità.

My genius, if I can call it that, is to combine a whole load of averageness into one compact frame.

Kau harus hidup dalam gelembungmu sendiri. Kau tidak bisa memaksa masuk ke dalam gelembung milik orang lain, karena dengan begitu, itu tak lagi menjadi gelembung.

But with each passing year, and each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.

I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers—small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafés. I'm happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and PizzaExpress, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are.

Don't you like it [i.e. school]?... No. I hate it. Why? It doesn't suit me. I'm not a school sort of person. I'm the wrong personality type.

in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't really claim that shooting presidents wasn't like him at all. Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs.

names are really fascist and don't allow us to express ourselves as human beings, and turn us into one thing.

Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs.

I don't belong to anyone ! I'm not a thing, to be kept or ordered or driven to such despair that I open my own veins. Look at me, Aoife. Look at me! I'm a woman.

You're like a sharp bright piece broken from a star. Too sharp, too bright, sometimes, for your own good.

Even the dead had names.

A name, she thinks, is what makes a person who they are. A name is how they know themself.

We are more than half of humanity. We are not imitation people, or chameleons taking on protective male coloration, longing for the day when men go away and we can return to being our true, insectlike selves. We are here, now. We are just like you.

Never judge a chicken by its skin.

Aside from myself, there was no sign of me.

After all who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of their loneliness

Holy shit, Bird, I whispered through my teeth. At least try to be normal. You have to at least try.

as a rule of thumb, whenever there appears a plural, correct for a singular. Should I ever let slip a royal WE, put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.

There was no one to call me to bed, no one to demand that the rhythms of my life operate in a duet.

The misery of other people is only an abstraction [...] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.

left to my own devices, I'm content to wake myself with a fart.

He was an average man. A man willing to accept things as they were, and, because of this, he lacked the potential to be in anyway original.

The singular power of literature lies not in its capacity for accurate representation of mass commonalities, but its ability to illuminate the individual life in a way that expands our understanding of some previously unseen or unarticulated aspect of existence.