Quotes About Individuality

The law didn't care if you were actually doing anything bad; they were willing to put you under the microscope just for being statistically abnormal.

The worst thing is to be worrying about what someone else is doing, because that has nothing to do with whether you're doing right.

Seth was a portable, external id. Not always comfortable or appropriate, but handy nevertheless.

There's no bullshit more self-serving than the idea that you're a precious snowflake, irreplaceable and deserving to be treated like a thoroughbred, when there are ten more just like you who'd do your job every bit as well.

Then he notices, he's a he again. Why not. Gender is just a slider.

I figured some people have edges that don't allow them to slot neatly into the holes society expects them to fit into, that was all.

As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with being an odd duck. I figured some people have edges that don't allow them to slot into the holes society expects them to fit into, that was all.

If I start giving people what they like I'll turn into one of them and I don't want to be one of them I want to be one of me.

Can we imagine a togetherness that isn't founded on gross generalizations, conceptualizing ourselves as unique individuals who still stand to gain from looking out for one another? Can we identify with each other rather than with categories or masters?

Because I care about human beings, I want them to be free to do what is right for them. Isn't that more important than mere peace on earth? Isn't freedom, even dangerous freedom, preferable to the safest slavery, to peace bought with ignorance, cowardice, and submission?

Only by concealing our identities can we shed the masks we have to wear at school, at work, even at home - everywhere there is surveillance, policing, punishment - masks that are increasingly indistinguishable from ourselves.

Once I had asked, 'But are you a Democrat or a Republican?" and Jonathan said, "I'm socially progressive but fiscally conservative," and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, "Is that like being bisexual?" Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.

Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable? Sometimes [his] gestures and inflections were so mercilessly familiar that it was as if he were an extension of me, an element of my own personality over which I had little control.

Sometimes when I speak, I feel like I'm writing dialogue for the character of myself. I'm impersonating a normal human when really I'm a confused freak.

People are complicated, she continued, and the ones who aren't are boring. Then maybe I'm boring. We looked at each other, and in a genuinely sad voice, she said, Maybe you are.

I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you're not that weird or decided that being weird isn't bad.

It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she'd grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After

Profii de aici le-au vazut pe toate. Noi ne percepem ca individualitati distincte, dar in ochii lor nu suntem decat o masa de nevoi adolescentine." – Gates Medkowski

era greu sa-mi imaginez ca m-as fi putut simti vreodata ca o tipa "misto", dar ma simteam ca o persoana de care eu insami as fi fost intrigata in primii mei ani acolo.

Did I used to think being pretty was my primary obligation because I was in some way delusional? Or was it that I'd absorbed the messages I was meant to absorb with the same diligence with which I studied? As the mother of a daughter, I hope she won't judge herself as harshly as I judged myself, but her personality is so unlike mine - she is boisterous and outspoken - that I'm not inordinately concerned.

In the end, there was always your regular life, and no one could deal with it but you.

I was me, Hillary, but I also was a vessel and a proxy.

We're so lucky, I said. Don't you think? Most people don't have that. I know, everywhere other than New York, if you have a good job and a spouse and kids and a house and a car, those are the markers of maturity and stability and completeness. And you eat your dinner at seven P.M. and go to bed at ten, and go for vigorous jogs on the weekend. If you're into that, great. But there are lots of other ways to put a life together.

I want to open myself up, I want to experience other dimensions, I don't want to be bound by the rules of this world. Does that make me a freak?