Quotes About Individuality

But, she knew, you didn't have to marry your soulmate, and you didn't even have to marry an Interesting. You didn't always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.

Everyone," she continues, looking around at all of us, "has something to say. But not everyone can bear to say it. Your job is to find a way.

And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?

I've always had a fear of being small and ordinary. "How can I just have this one life?

You didn't always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.

You're telling me that because of the Internet, and the availability of every experience, every whim, every tool, sudden everyone's an artist? But here's the thing: if everyone's an artist, then no one is.

All people, male or female, were helpless in the specifics of their own bodies.

Greer had noticed, when she was very young, how, looking straight ahead, you could sort of always see the side of your own nose. Once she realized this it began to trouble her. Nothing was wrong with her nose, but she knew it would always be part of her view of the world. Greer had understood it was hard to escape yourself, and to escape the way it felt being you.

But sometimes the way to get involved is to just live your life and be yourself with all your values intact.

Greer had understood it was hard to escape yourself, and to escape the way it felt being you.

And it was true that if you categorized people by which Disney character they were, then Jonah would always be Bambi. Motherless, graceful, unobtrusive. Ethan--Jiminy Cricket, the annoying little conscience... just look at Ash. In the Disney hierarchy she was Snow White... He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her.

All of the women in that time and place, Thea had learned, were stuffed into muslin and starched cotton and forced to sit ramrod-straight and plait their hair or pull it back off their faces with fish oil. There were shoes that laced up with a hundred eyelets, and corsets that required a special hook to open. Women were all in it together back then, as opposed to now, when one woman's experience could differ so greatly from another's that you never knew who you were talking to.

Everyone basically has one aria to sing over their entire life, and this one is hers.

My job does not define me.

To keep people from the particulars of your life kept you from being seen as one thing or another, and so it was possible you could be thought of as anything, or even as everything.

Why are we so hard on ourselves?" Asked someone with great plaintiveness. Faith thought, it's not that I'm so hard on myself exactly, it's that I've learned to adopt the views of men as if they were my own.

Being alone was something that Faith had perfected over the years. When you were alone you didn't have to worry about every little detail on your body, whether your legs were like prickly pears or whether after a cocktail party you were Brie-breathed. Unlike many people she knew, she often preferred her own company.

If the twenty-first century taught you anything, it was that your words belonged to everyone, even if they actually didn't.

There are no grades anymore, Greer. Sometimes I think you forget that. There are never going to be grades for the rest of your life, so you just have to do what you want to do. Forget about how it looks. Think about what it is.

I was born like this. I came out of the womb saying, 'I'm worried that something's wrong with me. There's this weird growth between my legs!

I like being a girl. I just want to be the one who says what that means.

He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her.

Who could say why a family decided to have a certain style, to tell the jokes it did, to put up its particular refrigerator magnets?

But of course people were different, she remembered; they were allowed to be different.