Quotes About Nonconformity

I just don't like to do a lot of the normal things expected of other artists. I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just trying to stick with what it is I want to do.

People in Scunthorpe don't care what I say. And I'm not camp, either. I'm a geezer. I'm not a raving queer, I've got a bit of character. I just ignore people who shout at me in the street. I just stick my head in the air; I'm not interested.

I just get really bored with sticking to the norm and having the proper conservative image. That's just so not me.

I don't know where my fashion sense comes from, exactly. I've always been interested in, not necessarily being unique, but not necessarily sticking to the preexisting paradigm - whether it be clothes or music or whatever.

I don't think drag will ever be mainstream because it's counter to what the mainstream directive is, which is picking an identity and sticking with it for the rest of your life.

I never saw myself as the classic singer/songwriter who sticks to his guitar.

Never allow a stigma or the popular thing to define you.

Stay away from excellence at all costs; it stinks.

Any cartoon that can be liked by a committee is really not worth drawing; in fact, must not be drawn at all! Better to become a stockbroker.

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.

We've stood by who we are and we didn't listen to anyone else.

Nobody's going to tell me how to be different, so stop asking me. Stop asking me what two-plus-two is. Everybody knows two-plus-two is five.

That's the first sign you know you're a Libertarian. You see the red light. You stop. You realize that there's not a car in sight. And you put your foot on the gas.

I was a brownie for a day. My mom made me stop. She didn't want me to conform.

I don't like to go to regular, big stores - I don't like to wear anything anybody else does.

I'd go to meetings with record companies - CBS, Decca, EMI. They'd tell me to wear a pair of jeans and grow my hair and look normal. And I'd say, 'Sod that,' and storm out. And I do think that belligerence is important when you're young.

I'm not an example for how people should live their lives. Never in my life would I ever set out to be an example for people on how to live their lives. If you need an example for how to live, then you just shouldn't have been born. Straight up.

I know women that act queeny, I know men that are straight that act queeny, and I know gay men that act queeny... To me, those are people who think the rules don't apply to them.

We live in world that wants to burnish the rough edges and straighten the crooked line, but conformity doesn't beget greatness.

I hate going to the gym and doing it the old-fashioned way. I hate anything that's too straightforward, too routine, too familiar. I get bored really, really quickly.

Far from being a showbiz gimmick, for me dressing as I please has signalled the end of a lifelong performance of straightforward masculinity.

For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.

What is right for one soul may not be right for another. It may mean having to stand on your own and do something strange in the eyes of others.

I was always told that I was too strange or that I was too cheesy by different groups of people, like the record companies said I was way too weird and the indie people wouldn't even let me in their band.