Quotes About Individuality

Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Book Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.

Some kids get called "bundles of joy" or "slices of heaven" or "dreams come true." We got "the fifty-fourth generation of DNA experiments." Doesn't have the same warm and fuzzy feel. But maybe I'm oversensitive.

But… if everyone was special, wouldn't that really mean that no one was special at all?

He has tattoos, nose rings, and those little metal studs that look like steel zits. Recently, he had a metal spike pierced through his ear. Made his lobes look like barbecued shrimp on a skewer.

I knew Henry Fonda was my father, but I didn't know who I was. They all thought of me as Henry Fonda's son. Unfortunately for them, they never got to know me.

Very often, unfortunately, people may believe something, but they go along with a group of people because they don't have the courage to stand alone or stand up for themselves.

Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.

I'm very happy to say goodbye to the three-button suits. I hate three-button suits. Some people can pull them off, but they're legitimately really, really skinny. Unfortunately, the only people who actually wear them are, like, Mr. Monopoly, and people like that.

I don't want to get hung up on what 'people,' that nebulous mass, think about me. That's the way to unhappiness, I think.

A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness, even self-loathing. If no jeans fit, you'll feel uncomfortable or inferior. If no housing developments reflect your taste for unique architecture, you'll write screeds against philistine mass culture.

I generally find that comparison is the fast track to unhappiness. No one ever compares themselves to someone else and comes out even. Nine times out of ten, we compare ourselves to people who are somehow better than us and end up feeling more inadequate.

Scarcely anyone ever wants to be anybody else. However handicapped or unhappy he feels himself, he would not change places with other more fortunate mortals.

At the end of the day, I know that I would rather be alone and occasionally lonely and unhappy than in a miserable marriage and lonely and unhappy all the time. I don't mind being single. In fact, I like it.

Kids are the most conventional people in the world. It is more important than anything else for them to conform, and I was a kind of oddball. I was driven into being independent. I was very, very unhappy.

I think rather than being unhappy with somebody, being alone and happy is better.

The first record I made, when I listen to it, I understand. I understand perfectly well why certain musicians were unhappy with me. I had to decide: was I unhappy with me? I liked it. If they didn't like it, it was on them.

I spent so long trying to be other people, and it made me really deeply unhappy.

I dyed my hair about 42 different colours, and kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different. But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is also probably why I was unhappy.

It always weirds me out and makes me unhappy that some people think I'm Justin. I'm not. People can be talking to me and I know they think they are talking to Justin. It's hard to explain.

In high school, I tried very hard to make everybody like me, which resulted in me being extremely unhappy and in a lot of pain. Therefore, the lesson I got from that was that I can't make everybody happy.

Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty.

I'm not good at being a picture-perfect pop star, happy all the time. If I'm having a bad day, I can't pretend. I'm always a bit unhappy, but that's just me. I like dwelling in my sadness.

When you're in a world, and your parents are one way, and you're told, 'This is how the whole world is, and this is how you're supposed to be,' and you're terribly unhappy in that world, it's a very scary thing.

Everyone has self-esteem issues when they are a teenager, but I think you have to accept who you are, because otherwise you are going to have a really unhappy life.