Quotes About Individuality

That idea – of one's own life as something that had already been dictated – was strangely seductive, until you realised that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy.

As it happened I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even of self-definition – I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another: in fact, if I read something I admired I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.

When the recorded voice came to the part about the oxygen masks, the hush remained unbroken: no one protested, or spoke up to disagree with this commandment that one should take care of others only after taking care of oneself. Yet I wasn't sure it was altogether true.

What was soothing, he believed, was the very fact that this oceanic chorus was affixed in no one person, that it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere: he recognised that a lot of people found this idea maddening, but for him the erosion of individuality was also the erosion of the power to hurt.

perhaps because I myself was not especially the focus of anyone's attention.

We live with an almost superstitious belief in our own differences, she said, and Luís has shown that those differences are not the result of some divine mystery but are merely the consequence of our lack of empathy, which if we had it would enable us to see that in fact we are all the same.

And I realised eventually, I said, that it could never be resolved, not so long as the aim was to establish the truth, for there was no single truth any more, that was the point. There was no longer a shared vision, a shared reality even. Each of them saw things now solely from his own perspective: there was only point of view.

But what other people thought was no longer of any help to me. Those thoughts only existed within certain structures, and I had definitively left those structures.

the Seagrave kids', who, in point of fact, were, at the time of our move, four endlessly lanky young women of up to nineteen years old, with the face that goes with brogue shoes and tweed hats, and about as much bosom as imported rabbits.

The woman without a background has a thin time, at any age,

Because sometimes in life, Ken didn't always choose Barbie. (Jane Alcott)

Because sometimes in life Ken doesn't always choose Barbie.

But just playing the partner of someone famous, I had a lot more freedom.

Heard from whom? I always hated this small-town-grapevine nonsense. That's something I love about the city. The anonymity. No one knows who you are, and no one gives a shit about your business. It's a beautiful thing.

I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.

Maybe the world isn't really different, but I am different, and I am in the world.

I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don't like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don't solicit their opinions or votes.

I don't expect people to agree with all my votes.

Ideologically, there are no major differences between the two Pauls, and there are stylistic similarities too; like his dad, Rand hardly minds being the lone 'no' vote in a sea of 'yes' votes. But unlike his dad, Rand seems to pick his spots with at least one eye on the bigger picture of politics.

I've been ostracized before in legislative bodies for voting against the majority. That doesn't bother me.

Personally, I'm not a Republican, and I'm not a Democrat. People need to stop focusing on becoming part of a party and instead voting with their mind and their heart.

The fact that I am Latino is not a secret. There's not much I can do about that. It is what it is. I think people know that my last name ends in a vowel. What can I tell you?

The only vowel I'm concerned with is 'I.'

I am neither a homosexual nor a eunuch, nor have I ever taken any vows of chastity.