Quotes About Individuality

A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.

Authentic religious expression for them was an experience of the soul and made no distinctions of gender. As Lucretia Mott said, "In Christ, there is neither male nor female." Gradually, I have realized the core of what set them apart for me. It is that they lived, more than most of us, from a place of wholeness. They were authentically themselves without amputations or edits.

Claiming our voice, and our selfhood, is a sacred act.

Once Burns had admitted frankly that the most difficult thing he had to learn at Oxford was the English. What was it that David had said last summer? 'We are becoming a nation of professional eccentrics. Foreigners provide us with a stage, and we enjoy our little appearances all the more because we convince everyone, including ourselves, that we don't even notice the audience.

Dolly is both Cinderella and her fairy godmother, and she has no need for a Prince Charming.

I collected pictures and I drew pictures and I looked at the pictures by myself. And because no one else ever saw them, the pictures were perfect and true. They were alive.

If you wish to be truly free, you must love no one.

If you wish to be truly free, you must love no one. But of course if you take that path you may also find that in the end you're unloved.

People underestimate the freckled.

She wants to see good hearts and good brains put to proper use, but I'm not convinced that everybody ought to live like that, or even that everybody can.

she was herself entire, and knew she could not be consumed.

His dear face - his thrice-broken nose, his summer eyes.

The skirt flared wonderfully, and there was the sweet ribbon bow at the waist. It was a dress to be worn by the sort of girl who'd check that no one was looking, then skip down a quiet street instead of walking, just so the fun of it was hers alone.

Harriet's mother, Margot, is no fan of gingerbread. She stood alone over her mixing bowl and stirred with the clenched fist of a pugilist.

It isn't magic," she said. "It's just that I'm well dressed. You men who try to tell me I'm a scarecrow or try to grab my arm but can't manage it, don't you understand that you're not really addressing me? It's more as if you're talking to a coat I'm wearing.

Collectively they were an embodiment of Cool Britannia before the concept had even had a name. And this set of parents certainly is one body—it's impossible to speak to any of them individually. Group communication or deafening silence . . . your choice. Harriet can see why the other parents don't bother with the PPA.

Do you know what lobotomy is?" - "I think so. It's when they operate and remove parts of your brain, right?" - "Right. Boyfriends are the same thing. They shrink your brain. Any female who really wants to be able to think for herself shouldn't be wasting her time on boys.

Lily was a bunch of crumpled pockets and Sylvie is a black dress, perfumed scarves, iron posture and whatever else turns a person into an atmosphere.

It is important to stress the ways that people are different from each other, because so much of the suffering that we experience in our relationships with other people is caused by the fact that we are blind to their point of view.

So everybody lives the way they're told to. The way they have to. Everybody most of the time. Not ever all the time. Hair style, clothing, manner of speech, ideas, cars, houses, and everything. Just like they have to. Even the way we walk. But not all the time. Comes a time when everybody breaks out. And that's the only characteristic of human nature I know of. Not greed, not obedience, not violence, nor any of those things the capitalists would have us believe are intrinsic. Only rebellion.

Life is also meaningful without being married', she had once told her mother, and marrying merely for the sake of it was, in her view, 'one of the greatest mistakes a woman can make

It's so nice to be insane, no one asks you to explain.

it's a free country, a woman can drink-garden if she wants to…

there's a difference between eager-to-please nice-girl syndrome and feeling genuinely good about yourself.