Quotes About Self-expression

We need to stop apologizing for celebrating life. We need to stop apologizing for wanting to protect an individual's right to build a business.

There is nothing more awesome than being yourself.

I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

Even if we are all products of the cultural blender, each mixture of influences, vocabularies, memories, orientations, and temperament possesses a distinct and unmistakable flavor. We make ourselves out of the models we encounter; we give ourselves a form through the different ways we inhabit other forms. And we bring these differences to the event of reading, even as we are reoriented— sometimes subtly, sometimes significantly— by the sum of what we read.

I have buried my fears, abandoned self-consciousness, and allowed myself to slide into sensation. I like the person I have become.

What's the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an imitation man?

We all have our la-la-la song. The thing we do when the world isn't singing a nice tune to us. We sing our own nice tune to drown out ugly.

While using generics, people describe themselves as who they want to be, not who they actually are. You need to get specific to bring out the edge cases.

So you get less shy about how hard you have to try. And you don't bother hiding your Kotter tapes. Sure, they expose some of my appalling deficiencies. But my appalling deficiencies are all I have to offer. Is there such a thing as romantic love that does not depend on someone embracing my deficiencies? I hope I will never find out.

For one ridiculous moment she considered changing into something sexier—at least from the waist up, as that was all he'd see on his camera—but decided not to bother. Logan had fallen in love with her in striped T-shirts and jeans. There was no need to mess with a winning formula.

you cannot please everyone, so why please anyone at all?

I find that I have been scribbling away for nearly an hour. Miss Gisborne keeps on saying that I am too prone to the insertion of unnecessary hyphens, and that it is a weakness. If a weakness it is, I intend to cherish it.

I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle.

A blogger is an average person who happens to have a need to count his friends every half hour.

There is a limit to how much you can change to be liked for who you really are.

If we would listen to our kids, we'd discover that they are largely self-explanatory.

It is not only possible to be the person you pretend to be, but there is less effort involved.

Why try to be someone you're not? Life is hard enough without adding impersonation to the skills required.

Best be yourself, imperial, plain, and true.

To live originally is to live authentically, to not be defined by culture or environment, to be truly oneself. We do not want to ignore culture. We live in it; but we need not be defined by it. Living originally, we are in the world but we are not of the world.

You don't have to be nice all the time. Get angry once in a while. You're entitled.

Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash. What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal. What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people's style, or personal rantings that do not really express anything.

Conforming to social norms, you will listen more to others than to your own voice.

Those who are truly original and different do not need to make a great show of it.