Quotes About Individuality

Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.

Know thyself,' said Socrates. Know thyself,' said Sappho, 'and make sure that the Church never finds out.

As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.

I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.

If I let them take away my demons, I'll have to give up what I've found.

I can't catch her by copying her, I can't draw her with a borrowed stencil. She is all the things a lover should be and quite a few a lover should not. Pin her down? She's not a butterfly. I'm not a wrestler. She's not a target. I'm not a gun. Tell you what she is? She's not Lot no. 27 and I'm not one to brag.

I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me.

What sex are you?" Doesn't matter does it? After all that's your problem." If I keep you, what will happen?" You'll have a difficult, different time." Is it worth it?" That's up to you.

You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own.

Saddest of all are the woman who were brought up to believe that self-sacrifice is the highest female virtue.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

Can I? Can I speak my mind or am I dumb inside a borrowed language, captive of bastard thoughts? What of me is mine?

Examine this statement: 'A woman cannot be a poet.' Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?

Humans have given away all their power to a "they". You aren't able to fight the system because without the system none of you can survive.

Whelks are strange and comforting. They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly. But they have a strong sense of personal dignity. Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar there is something noble about a whelk. Which cannot be said for everybody.

When you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

And then I was offered the job of a particle in factory physics. I was offered the job of an electron in an office atom. I was offered the job of a frequency for a radio station. People told me I could easily make it as a ray in a ray gun. What's the matter with you, don't you want to do well? I wanted to be a beach bum and work on my wave function. I have always loved the sea.

I was in those days all about the 'fuck you'. Fuck you for not recognising how great I am. I'll do it myself.

As he turned inwards she turned outwards, but while he wore his intensity like a garment, she slept in hers.

And if you have found your voice, you can be heard

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

My mother has often been labelled as strange but that's because she says things that people can't possibly believe. Mostly she's right.

I guess I'm afraid of not being like other people. No, that's not true. I'm not afraid of not being like other people. I'm afraid I won't find anybody who doesn't mind me not being like other people. I'm not ambitious for money or power. I want to find some real way to live.