top of page
.png){kind=small}
"There's nothing good about being ordinary. People don't respect you for it. People run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don't run with the herd. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Individuality quotes
"Life is too short as we all know it to be. So why dare to spend it trying to live up to other people's worldly expectations of you?"
"The most interesting people are the unusual. No one writes about or discusses the average, the ordinary, or the common; they write about and discuss the weird, the mad and the different, so if you are one, even though the opinions of others are of no importance, you are, in their eyes, significant enough to notice and remember."
"I don't care a hang for any cat that hasn't stripes."
"A misfit is like the round peg that cannot fit into the square hole or the running river that just can't stay still."
"Society destroys your individuality, your soul."
"In real life there is no such person as the average man. There are only particular men, women and children, each with his or her inborn idiosyncrasies of mind and body, and all trying (or becoming compelled) to squeeze their biological diversities into the uniformity of some cultural mold."
"The world doesn't celebrate your similarity but your difference."
"You'll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in."
"As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: 'Don't waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!'I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality."
Explore more quotes by Erica Jong
"I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity."
"Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life."
"Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly focused on commercialism and on creating money and completely turned away from any other kind of creative value. People don't generally turn to poetry unless they're bereaved or have fallen in love. Or in adolescence, when their feelings are very strong and turbulent. I think most of us are dying for lack of spirit in this culture."
"I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am."
"There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge."
"I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back."
bottom of page