Quotes About Self-expression

According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

the truth is that being yourself... fully yourself around another human being is a treat that you should probably spare anyone that you claim to love

If, as Proust suggests, we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

In conversations, my priority was to be liked, rather than to speak the truth. A desire to please led me to laugh at modest jokes like a parent on the opening night of a school play.

You are allowed to be.

Never at my best when at my best behaviour.

The difference between Old Honolulu and New, she would come to decide, was the difference between a beautiful woman who was simply being herself and a beautiful woman calling attention to herself: a little vain perhaps, but you couldn't say she wasn't attractive.

You cannot be other than you are. Thank God.

An authentic life does not require anyone else's approval for your creative choices.

It takes courage to leave behind the world you have been taught is so important, and instead claim what is right for you. Ultimately we must, as Walt Whitman urged, "Dismiss whatever insults your soul.

THE MYTH: Being a misfit is a defect you must correct. THE REALITY: Your nonconformity is your pathway to fulfillment.

After a certain point you quit trying to prove yourself to anyone and you simply live in the way that makes you happy.

Do it because you would, not because you should.

On the other hand, Andrea had decided last month, on the occasion of her twelfth birthday and for no discernible reason (at least, none that an adult could discern), that from then on her given name would be Fitzwinkle. And then

Or there's Alex Crowley , tiresomely attempting to persuade his school-chums to refer to him as Shelley's Alastor , like some self-conscious Goth from Nottingham called Dave insisting that his vampire name is Armand .

Then why put labels on ourselves? That's a job for a psychiatrist. We punch people, Valkyrie. That's who we are. Embrace your inner lunatic. Fun times guaranteed.

Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.

If you do grow up feeling as though you don't quite fit in as a child, it's very easy to decide you're certain not going to fit in as an adult. You hang on to your eccentricities and hate the idea of conforming. It's a common pattern.

Hey! To those who can still see and think clearly for themselves. You all better quit letting disapproving ordinary individuals tell you that you have to be a certain age to make wealth by creating your own music. -MillYentei

You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.

I can be a better me than anyone can; I am me. Good or bad. I am myself. I'm no carbon copy of no one else.

A new dress doesn't get you anywhere. It's the life you're living in the dress.

You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want.

They're threatened by you,' she said. 'You chose to do something they'd never have the gumption to choose for themselves. Being their own person.