Quotes About Nonconformity

Relish the opportunity to be an outsider. Embrace that label.

This whole town is like a big Fuck You to Thoreau.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. George S. Patton

We're a beat generation.

The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved...the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing.

But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind

Organic grow-your-own-granola food is not my style. When a style or a trend wants to impose a way of behaving on me, I do the exact opposite; I might even develop a particular fondness for potassium sorbate and sodium erythorbate.

Stop caring what other people think Erin. Life's too short to live by other people's rules

Simply following the herd is not going to work. In a way that past generations simply didn't have to do, each one of us will need to think about who we are and how we construct our life and how this reflects our identity and values.

You and me," she says, "we're two sides of the same coin. Gender's a box you turn inside out, tear up, and sew a gown out of." She says most people are bored and hateful because they can't fuck with the box. They think prison's protection. They take what they're served and think they like it, but deep down they want to be something else, and they'll kill anyone sewing gowns they're afraid to wear.

I thank her for starting that rumor in my brain that I was lovable. I thank her for her one-woman cult of blood, cum, spit, and razors that called me exquisite and shunned all the winners, cheerleaders, cops, and clear-skinned Hollywood movie stars.

Serena Killingsworth walked toward them, carrying her cello in a brown case. Her short hair, currently colored Crayola-red, was twisted into bobby-pin curls. A nose ring glistened on the side of her nose. She wore purple lipstick, red-brown shadow around her green eyes, and a smile that seemed to hold a secret. She was new at school. Vanessa liked her look and especially admired the way she seemed so oblivious to what other people thought about her.

No one else understands us 7th sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes, we are often aggressively instructed to 'get a life' by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves.

They do as they please, they say what they think, and nobody cares, for everyone is busy doing likewise.

Don't let me ever compete with anyone! If I'm a worm and no man, let me enjoy my life as a worm. Let me stop showing off to anyone... Let me live my life free from the opinions, good or bad, of all other people!

Not that I will paint in my own way, live in my own way, speak in my own way—they don't mind that. It even excites them. But what they can't stand is that I hate them when they don't behave in their own way.

Judith insisted he attend some crunchy little granola academy where all plastic is forbidden and all the teachers wear thick wool socks and old sandals.

never underestimate the cool of your elders. They might be a kickass pair of lesbian superwomen who lived exactly the fuck the way they wanted to, even in what we now consider to be less enlightened times.

Nonsubordination is the simple, unspectacular struggle to shape one's life. It is people's reluctance to give up the simple pleasures of life, their reluctance to become machines, the determination to forge and maintain some degree of power-to.

You're not like anyone else, Billy - that's what's the matter with you, Donna said.

I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it.