Quotes About Self-expression

I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

You get to define the terms of your life. You get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of your feelings...

Not enough chicks do that, if you ask me—just tell society and their expectations to go fuck themselves.

Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel. So release yourself from that. Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic.

But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth.

I'd stopped being grandiose. I'd lowered myself to the notion that the absolute only thing that mattered was getting that extra beating heart out of my chest. Which meant I had to write my book. My very possibly mediocre book. My very possibly never-going-to-be-published book. My absolutely nowhere-in-league-with-the-writers-I'd-admired-so-much-that-I-practically-memorized-their-sentences book.

I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life. I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me.

You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.

When you're single and in your twenties, having sex with whoever comes along is practically your job. It's biological. It's emotional. It's psychological. It's egomaniacal.

He inspected himself glumly in the rearview mirror, probing tentatively at the full-blown shiner that now graced his left eye socket. Deep reds and purples adorned it in bold, splashy strokes; and the moisture from his icepack gave it the appearance of a high-gloss finish. He briefly considered turning it in as his next art project, then stifled the thought.

I was still shy and afraid to talk, for fear I'd say the wrong thing and make a clown of myself. I even remember a writer asking me for a 'quote' and I was so green I didn't know what a quote was. I thought it was a soft drink.

Why doesn't th' feller who sayz 'I'm no speechmaker,' let it go at that instead o' givin' a demonstration?

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

If we were meant to be nude, we would have been born that way.

The one thing in the world of value, is, the active soul, — the soul, free, sovereign, active. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn.

Be your whole self with your whole soul.

Makeup and clothing and all that should be a fun way to be creative and express yourself. Just like in nature, where birds have all the colors. But instead, it's all focused on the aesthetics of being attractive to men. Even if you really don't think it is that, that's what we're doing.

The nicest thing about coming of age is that I can do whatever I like.

I am just as comfortable in sweats and sneakers as I am in a dress and heels. Attitude is everything!

In terms of work I've always had a Bad Attitude in that I won't work anywhere which requires me to work strict hours or follow a dress code. I don't know if that's an Asperger's thing or not, I think it's just being reasonable.

I don't go by or change my attitude based on what people say. At the end of the day, they, too, are judging me from their perspective. I would rather be myself and let people accept me for what I am than be somebody who I am not, just because I want people's approval.

You didn't come into this life to be anyone else. You are here to stand out. To express yourself as only you can.

Hij kwam binnen in de lappenjas van een afkorting N.S.M.A.N.N. (Nederlandse Schrijver van Marokkaanse Afkomst met Nederlandse Nationaliteit), maar ging weer weg, na een goede rui, een verlies van overbodige veren, als auteur. Hij is stukken magerder geworden, maar gelukkiger. Noem hem voortaan simpelweg auteur.