Quotes About Uniqueness

We want strangeness in our stories, but we want familiarity, too. We want a new novel to be not quite like anything we've read before. At the same time, wee look for it to be sufficiently like other things we've read so that we can use those to make sense of it.

Own the books you read. Also poems, stories, flash fiction, plays, memoirs, movies, creative nonfiction, and all the rest. ... take ownership of your reading. It's yours. It's special. It is exactly like nobody else's in the whole world.

I often tell parents, "Don't want your child to become something in particular; just want him to become." With such an attitude parents will inevitably find themselves feeling more and more accepting of each child and experiencing joy and excitement watching each become.

Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.

though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike amoung them. Some approached pure blanching, some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters (which has possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadavourous tint, and to a georgian style.

The thought of Pascal's was brought home to him: "A mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux. Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de différence entre les hommes.

Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being.

finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.

Idiosyncrasy

You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust...you owe me awe.

You're his friend, Jack. Why can't you leave him alone? 'Because it's his bad luck to be the best. Because he doesn't think like other people. Somehow he never got in a rut.

You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust. Your life to mine is a slug track on stone. A thin silver mucus track in and out of the letters on my monument.

The moment a realm of intellectual activity is codifiable, it ceases to be uniquely human.

A wise professor once reminded her graduate students in psychology that "there is more variation within a group than between groups.

Quieres sobresalir en medio de la multitud? Hazlo con tus logros y no usando un traje de payaso, así eso sea lo que usen los amantes de la moda.

Wenn ein Tag wie alle ist, so sind sie alle wie einer.

Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said. Our interior world must be more than an echo of the words of someone else. There is no point in being a moon to somebody else's sun, still less is there any justification for our being moons of one another, and hence darkness to one another, not one of us being a true sun.

El Greco is not for a lot of people and perhaps he never was. That is, he is plenty complex, and most people cannot get at him all at once because they are not all that complex themselves.

No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

While some theorists may tend to discuss people in the abstract, actual flesh-and-blood human beings differ enormously in their behavior, not just from individual to individual, but from group to group and from one culture to another. Various tests of honesty reveal very striking differences.

Her feet were large, and she had a habit of whistling badly, but these things made her worthy of being loved. A goddess might be adored for a moment, but only a real person can speak forever to the rest of us.

Tennessee. Now there's a name for you. His mama named him that on account of their last name being so regular. 'With a plain vanilla name like Jones, you gotta have a first name that's special,' she'd said.

Our idol of the autonomous individual is a sham; the truth is we expect everyone to be the same, and dismiss as elitist those who are working through a call to any genuine vocation. It may be that our culture so fears the necessary other that it has grown unable to identify and name real differences without becoming defensive about them.

Whenever "everyone" is doing something, I seek to avoid it. But whenever someone tells me not to do something, that thing has a way of becoming the only thing that I want to do. I