Quotes About Individuality

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

Dinty W. Moore

You come to this, here's the marrow of it, not moving, not standing, it's too much to hold up, what I really want to say is, I don't want no fucking country, here or there and all the way back, I don't like it, none of it, easy as that. I'm giving up on land to light on, and why not, I can't perfect my own shadow, my violent sorrow, my individual wrists

How can a young man like to wear a beard?

She is a famous artists' model who claims to have been christened Topaz - even if this is true there is no law to make a woman stick to a name like that.

Topaz is beautiful - largely because of the strangeness of her face.

Ik schrijf dit terwijl ik in de gootsteen zit

Just as putting a gender on a being limits in some way the way we think about the being. By putting any kind of label on anything, we limit it.

If everybody spent enough time worrying about their own goddamn selves, no one would have to worry about anyone else.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.

You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.

He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

The self. What is the self? Everything you are, without others, without friends or strangers or lovers or children or streets to walk or food to eat or mirrors in which to see yourself. But are you anyone without others?

I feel artificially myself. I'm someone who's supposed to be me.

You understand it's not a matter of strategy. I'm not talking about secrets or deceptions. I'm talking about being yourself. If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.

Why are free spirits always so fucking dumb?

It's healthier to reject certain cautions than fall in line. I assume you know that, he said.

Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half-made selves, but it's not that you're pretending to be someone else. You're pretending to be exactly who you are. That's the curious thing.

We still want what we want. We want a haircut.

You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools.

It just means you are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that.

What is the self? Everything you are, without others, without friends or strangers or lovers or children or streets to walk or food to eat or mirrors in which to see yourself. But are you anyone without others?

We learn nothing from the stereotypes around us, not even that we're all the same.