Quotes About Nonconformity

I'm not a signing or dancing man.

Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

I am not one to adhere to silly clothing rules. I love mixing metals, wearing a brown bag with black shoes, whatever.

What Paul and I do is not fashionable - it's a load of silly characters mucking about.

Throw out the rule book. If you like wearing navy and black together, wear it; if you like mixing up gold and silver jewellery, mix it. If you like it, wear it - don't care about what anyone else thinks.

When we truly understand that the tribe doesn't give a damn, we're free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.

Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care.

You do your rebellions any way you can.

When someone tries to put you back into a box from which you've already escaped, you might recall a line from the Indian poet Mirabai. She said, "I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious!

Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.

This is bullshit. You think I care what other people think? What does age have to do with it? Why can't you be that girl? As for what I want to do with my life, why can't I figure that out with you?

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.

Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.

I gravitate to the world's outcasts," he explained in another email. "Prostitutes, thieves, the handicapped, the enormously ugly or deformed … For some reason I have always been fascinated by these subcultures.

A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.

You can not live your life just based on what everyone else thinks.

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.

There is no greater tyranny, Miss Rae, than convention

It is of no concern. I don't mind that I am not universally adored. If I wanted everyone to like me, I'd have to be kind and charming and bland and boring all the time, and what would be the fun in that?

I'm not so interested in being indie just for the sake of being indie.

It's not like I set out to be 'the indie guy.'

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

I appreciate individualism.

I'm not a slave to fashion; I'm into exercising my individuality.