Quotes About Self-expression

Leroy remained silent, and no wonder; Maggie knew how chirpy and artificial she sounded. An old person, trying too hard. But if only Leroy could see that Maggie was still young underneath, just peering out from behind an older face mask!

The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever.

I had hope for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface, and exit through it.

That girl in the painting looks so fierce, so strong. I want her to be the truth of me.

We don't have to look like everyone else...and act like everyone else. We've got a choice. We can grow up any way we want...It's about becoming what I want to become, not what some surgical committee thinks I should.

Tally's journey from ugly to pretty to special and then out the other side is not just a physical journey. It's also a journey through language, as Tally takes on the slang of her various new cliques and then slowly comes to realize that when your body keeps changing, sometimes the way you speak is the only piece of you that you can hold on to.

Shay's eyes flashed. "Or maybe when they do the operation—when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everybody else—maybe after going through all that you just aren't very interesting anymore." Tally

Stevie can't, I imagine. Stevie wouldn't really want to. She would always dress up as flamboyantly as possible when she went out, so she'd be noticed. She's a different kind of person than I am. People are appreciating me for the reasons I want to be appreciated for, and not for my chiffon gown. [Laughs]

Writers write. Runners run. Establish your identity by doing your work.

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

If all we do with these tools is teach compliance and consumption, that's all we're going to get. School can and must do more than train the factory workers of tomorrow.

Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.

Do What You Want; these are the 4 most frightening words brought to us by the Connection Revolution. If you want to sing, sing. If you want to lead, lead. If you want touch, connect, describe, disrupt, give, support, build, question—Do It. You will not be picked. But, if you want to pick yourself—go for it. The cost is that you own the results.

Sometimes, never let them see you sweat, is truly bad advice. The work of an individual who cares often exposes the grit and determination and effort that it takes to be present. Perfecting your talk, refining your essay and polishing your service until all elements of you disappear might be obvious tactics, but they remove the thing we were looking for: you.

You do people a service when you make better things and make it easy to talk about them. The best reason someone talks about you is because they're actually talking about themselves: "Look at how good my taste is." Or perhaps, "Look at how good I am at spotting important ideas.

Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized.

You weren't born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were trained to become a cog. There's an alternative available to you.

Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you're avoiding the anguish and giving in to the resistance.

The Bhagavad-Gita says, "It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else's perfectly.

Some artists think they need a boss. Someone who will not only pay them, but also tell them what to do. The moment this happens, the artist is no longer an artist.

In fact, determination is precisely what's needed to write poetry or create art. Determination of the will opens the door for us to trust ourselves enough to actually find the words.

The Bhagavad-Gita says, "It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else's perfectly." Consider the people who have found their voice and made a real impact: their paths always differ, but their practices overlap in many ways.

It's okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and your output, you are a cog, not an artist.

We choose not to be remarkable because we're worried about criticism. We