Quotes About Individuality

Good art means the ability of any one man to pin down in some permanent and intelligible medium a sort of idea of what he sees in Nature that nobody else sees. In other words, to make the other fellow grasp, through skilled selective care in interpretative reproduction or symbolism, some inkling of what only the artist himself could possibly see in the actual objective scene itself.

I'm really just trying to do things that I enjoy. I'm trying to play music that I like to play and like to listen to. I just have to think if I like those different kinds of music, there are other people who aren't so different from me.

Clearly, I'm not trying to write songs for the radio.

A man doesn't wear a red cowboy hat.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

I walk down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair, and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths.

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot We women who write poetry. And when you think How few of us there've been, it's queerer still. I wonder what it is that makes us do it, Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise, The fragments of ourselves.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.

Sometimes you have to act a little crazy just to stay sane.

not like Nicolas Cage who always just plays Nicolas Cage in every film. Daniel

I don't think my position unusual for a woman. I'm following a perfectly natural urge to do what I like.

I pity you. All your life you are going to be paralyzed by What Is Done, by what people tell you you should think or do... The best thing that could happen to you would be for you to be uncomfortable once in a while.

Watcha gonna do when I'm gone, Maggie?" you kept asking over and over, the other time, when you were going to London. "I'll do macrame, punk." "Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone, Maggie?" "You really think I need you that bad?" "Yes," you said. A simple Nebraska statement.

For what might happen if we lift the codicils on belching? If sex were permitted in the shopping malls? If people were allowed to sing arias from Don Giovanni , loudly and out of tune, waiting in line at Department of Motor Vehicles?

The city was filled to overflowing with persons who had neither brains nor individuality, who bore no resemblance to men that live by bread, and had only their outward shape to distinguish them from sheep.

It was as though a choir had been told not to sing harmoniously, but to sing their own songs, and to ensure that they were heard above the rest. I'm sure you can imagine what a deafening cacophony it would be.

You get a peculiar outlook at night. You feel an oddity, and are quite content to be one.

Women's Lib? Oh, I'm afraid it doesn't interest me one bit. I've been so liberated it hurts.

they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine

I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people's craziness has not managed to make me crazy.

I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.

who among us can imagine ourselves unimagined? who among us can speak with so fragile tongue and remain proud?

these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places.