Quotes About Individuality

Eccentricities, of which I know I have many, do not hold universal sexual and romantic lure. I understand that.

Celeste knew that, according to societal standards at least, she was attractive, but she didn't quite understand why those standards existed in the first place. Her appearance had nothing to do with the strange creature that she was.

At school my boobs were bigger than all my friends' and I was afraid to show them. Now I feel like they make my outfits look better. They're like an accessory.

I will shrink myself no longer to make any human feel secure

Greatness is never achieved by trying to imitate the greatness of another. Greatness is chipping away at all that does not belong to you and then expressing yourself so truly that others can't help but recognize it.

I don't do my work for any kind of group in particular, except for hobos, who just plain kick ass and light up my life.

I think there is something a little too self conscious about enjoying being an outsider.

How many times does a person write his name in a lifetime—a million? Two million?

Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.

The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.

She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way.

He has no ABCD friends at college. He avoids them, for they remind him too much of the way his parents choose to live, befriending people not so much because they like them, but because of a past they happen to share.

There's no point discussing it given that she's blind to the small pleasures my solitude affords me. In spite of how she's clung to me over the years my point of view doesn't interest her, and this gulf between us has taught me what solitude really means.

You, who chafed at the collective we created, who only wanted to subtract yourself, always, from the equation, throwing it off-balance.

Relax," Edith says. "The perfect name will come to you in time." Which is when Gogol announces, "There's no such thing." "No such thing as what?" Astrid says. "There's no such thing as a perfect name. I think that human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn eighteen," he adds. "Until then, pronouns.

And yet I know that expressing oneself necessarily means being different. The writer's voice is a singular one, solitary. Art is nothing other than the freedom to express oneself in any language, in whatever manner, dressed any which way.

Personally, I think it deplorable to place the words and opinions of others on the book jacket. I want the first words read by the reader of my book to be written by me.

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people. They

Ela tem o dom de aceitar a própria vida; conhecendo-a melhor, ele se dá conta de que ela nunca desejou ser outra pessoa a não ser ela mesma, nem ter sido criada em outro lugar, de algum outro jeito.

I've always felt in someone's shadow, even though I don't have to compare myself to brothers who are smarter, or to sisters who are prettier. There's no escape from the shadows that mount, inexorably, in this darkening season. Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast. That said, there are times I miss the pleasant shade a companion might provide.

She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way. This

Within Bengali families, individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared.

He has no ABCD friends at college. He avoids them, for they remind him too much of the way his parents choose to live, befriending people not so much because they like him, but because of a past they happen to share.

And for the first time in his life, another man's name upset Gogol more than his own.