Quotes About Individuality

You could have a family of one and still drive them apart.

You different, Lilith. You have more darkness 'bout you now. You turning into woman, Homer say to her. —Me turning into something, Lilith say.

Weeper stare at me hard then laugh. Nothing like a Weeper laugh, it start like a wheeze then somewhere, and you never know where, it explode into the biggest thing in the room. Who teach this little black man that he can laugh so?

I don't really care what other people think about art, sir. Either you get it or you don't, and it seems pretty stupid waiting on people to get it when you could just as easily enjoy having more museum space to yourself, thank to one less idiot telling me how his four-year-old daughter could do that.

Everybody lives in their own Jamaica and damn if that was ever going to be mine.

What a day when a man tell me what to do.

He was not a dark man, but not light either. His color was a nebulous thing, so like his voice, which was too low to be weak but too reedy to be commanding. In a town that preferred things black or white, grayness such as his was not welcome.

I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.

I admire that a woman can do people like a man. You just get up one day and gone. No drums, no pigeons, no note, no word, no nothing.

To be a man you do as man do. Master one thing and you can fail at everything else, for to be a man is to fail at everything else. Here is the one thing. What men do in all things, more than anything, is take up space, whether he be priest, king, beggar, or hunter. Whether he be living or dead. More space than he need, and more space than he will use.

In the end, it really doesn't matter what others think of me. All for Jesus, my Audience of One.

Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being, the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of, is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness --- it means more to me than my life itself.

In no case should we abandon responsibility for our own choice-making or give someone else's conception of what we are more weight than our own sense of self.

For instance, people who speak up for what they want in the face of conflicting peer group expectations must endure a period when others become rejecting, angry or critical. They must sustain themselves during the tension of these days (or months or years), while continuing to move in the direction they have decided is good for them. They must be strong enough within themselves to persevere and know that, even though others may be critical, they are acceptable in their own estimation. People

mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested, "'What will they think of me?' must be put aside for bliss.

The most dangerous of all behaviors may consist of doing things "because we're supposed to.

And I want him to know the subtle, sneaky, important reason why he was born a human being and not a chair.

While the effects of negative labels such as "lazy" and "stupid" may be more obvious, even a positive or an apparently neutral label such as "cook" limits our perception of the totality of another person's being.

You can be a French Canadian or an English Canadian, but not a Canadian. We know how to live without an identity, and this is one of our marvellous resources.

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands.

It's a mystery to me why extraordinary young women insist that they're normal.