Quotes on Non Conformity

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.

Who do I belong to? How come I mortgaged my being till I don't belong to myself? How come I sold my blood? And who now owns my indecisions, my hands, my private pain, my pride?

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

Our real journey in life is interior.

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

There are a lot of things in this world that are more important than being popular. Being true to yourself is one of them.

You spoke about things they couldn't see and so they laughed. Yet to row up the dark river against the current, to take the unknown road blindly, stubbornly, and to search for words rooted like the knotted olive tree- let them laugh. And to yearn for the other world to inhabit today's suffocating loneliness, this ravaged present- let them be.

What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. The way men usually are, it takes a name to make something visible for them.

When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes-and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history.

Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

When I am told I am too old to do something, I try to do it right away.

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

Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

Resistance is the secret of joy!