Quotes About Nonconformity

I never quite toed the line. I was a bit disruptive. All my early school reports from the age of 5 were 'Daniel must learn not to distract others.' And now, that's what I do for a living.

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace BY RICARDO SEMLER

I am viewed as the Negro who has gone outside of the categories assigned to me.

It is refreshing to be able to express my views without having to toe a party line. It has got me into trouble on the odd occasion, but I am not going to stop saying what I think.

My views on music, and life in general, are completely out of step with everything that's going on. I've always been out of step. The only thing that interests me is history, reviewing the past and making something out of it.

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

I was only a village doctor with a rebellious streak.

A rebel. That was me when I was younger. What was a rebel from New Jersey? A rebel was moving to the Village, not sleeping with top sheets, not eating a hot breakfast in the morning, not having 20 rolls of toilet paper and 10 boxes of Kleenex.

I grew up in a small Austrian village, a quite conservative one, and I was the weird little boy always dressing as a girl.

Kids always like the villain or the guy who's different.

In that world, 'villain' can simply be a label given to someone who doesn't conform. There are these unwritten rules in Bachelor Nation... I never follow those rules.

In spite of all the skills that I do have, to relate to the normal world I have no applicable skills. I can speak Russian, I can speak French. I know about Chanel. Especially vintage Chanel. I know what Halston is. All of these things, but they can't really be applied to a nine-to-five.

I don't look very much at magazines or go to vintage stores.

When I feel down I put on my most bonkers vintage dress and it always cheers me up. The way we dress is an expression of who we are, and I use clothes to let people know that I don't care about fitting in.

My parents let me get my outfit in the gayest place possible, the 'International Male Catalog.' They sold mostly speedos and thongs and clubwear, and I was like, I'm getting that sheer shirt with the dragon on it, and then those vinyl patent leather pants and the cheetah platform boots.

You want to do something, you want to have the bravery to do something original. And there will always be people who are like, the classicists who are like, 'No, but it's got to have this.' In life, there are people like that attached to every single thing that there is. These are the same people that are like, still playing vinyl.

My favourite virtue is not having any.

For every prescriptive idea about the craft of fiction, there's at least one writer who makes a virtue of the contrary.

We don't want to categorize our music. Some people say you need a definite musical direction to give a group visibility.

I don't give a damn what people think.

Let us thank God for valour in abstraction For those who go their own way, will not kiss The arse of law and order nor compound For physical comfort at the price of pride

Come, drunks and drug-takers; come perverts unnerved! Receive the laurel, given, though late, on merit; to whom and wherever deserved. Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue, Get the hell out of the way of the laurel. It is deathless And it isn't for you.

This was too much. "I refuse. I absolutely REFUSE to be an onion.

I was hanged for living alone," said Ruth. It was rare, almost unheard of, that she quoted her own poem, but they heard it now. "For having a weedy farm in my own name / And a surefire cure for warts.