Quotes About Individuality

For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.

Nice tights," I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

There are people who will try to make you choose between who you are and who they want you to be. You have to watch out for those people.

Sometimes your body feels like a cage for all the stuff inside. You paint your nails, braid your hair, and buy the right kind of jeans, but none of it is really about you.

Sheila made it sound simple, like everyone had one real self. But what if I didn't? Or what if my real self was no good? I kept imagining Angelica's face, half like usual, half not working right. Sometimes I felt like that on the inside, like I knew how I wanted to be, but it didn't match up with how I really was.

I've thought a lot about those veils. I wonder if, every once in a while, someone is born without one.

She complained there was no 'café au lait'-colored construction paper for her skin, or 'sixty-percent-cacao-chocolate' color for her eyes. I remember staring at her while these words came out of her mouth, and thinking, Your skin is light brown. Your eyes are dark brown. Why don't you just use brown, you idiot? Jay Stringer didn't complain about the paper, and neither did any of the other ten kids using brown.

For many of us it seems that to be a feminist in the way that we have seen or understood feminism is to conform to an identity and way of living that doesn't allow for individuality, complexity, or less than perfect personal histories. We fear that the identity will dictate and regulate our lives, instantaneously pitting us against someone, forcing us to choose inflexible and unchanging sides, female against male, black against white, oppressed against oppressor, good against bad.

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

People call me feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Even when I'm playing someone named Fat Amy, I'm all about confidence and attitude.

I never had a set of rules. Every situation is different.

His ears were so littered with studs, safety pins and dangling razor blades that if he were to stand between two strong magnets his face would peel off.

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte... ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual's taste.

When you finally accept that you're a complete dork, your life gets easier. No sense in trying to be cool.

There are billions of men in the world, probably millions near my age. Maybe hundreds who are compatible with me. Maybe at least a dozen who would want to date me. There's got to be at least five on the continent whom I could probably marry. So why am I so hung up on this one guy?

We all march to the drum,"she murmured."However we are raised, however we are trained, it never seems to leave us. Do you think we can break free?" . . . "We can all learn,"he answered."All grow and change. That choice is ours to make.

It's perfectly acceptable to survive, even if others didn't.

For something to be beautiful it doesn't have to be pretty.

I would rather be ostracized than assimilated! I read recently that my greatest accomplishment was my unerring ability to make myself unpopular.

I never set out to make myself unpopular; I just say what I think, so I sometimes rub people up the wrong way, particularly people who parade their ideals before them like a banner and use them to hide behind. And I will keep on saying what I think. I am not prepared to abandon my self-determined existence for an ideology or an ideal.

Wem die Fähigkeit abhandengekommen ist, selbstbestimmt zu handeln, ist aber nicht meinesgleichen.

Everything, indeed, in a work of art should be unedited,--and even the words, by the manner of grouping them, of shaping them to new meanings,--and one often regrets having an alphabet familiar to too many half-lettered persons.