Alan Paton Quotes

I refused to conform to an image that a lot of people thought a president's brother should adopt.

I'm not really rebellious. People think I am, but I'm not.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

The young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.

To me, in life, if there's, like, a rule, and I think it's ridiculous, then of course I'll circumvent that but also point out how ridiculous the rule is. Other than that, if I go to a concert, and my seat is Row G, Seat 12, I'm sitting in Row G, Seat 12. I don't care if I'm with five other friends, I'm supposed to be in Seat 12, that's my seat.

I'm not a blender. I don't like people who blend into society.

Even though I did things which were not in accordance with the society's norms, deep down, I am an orthodox woman.

I can't stay within the constructs of societal expectations.

I don't have any desire to rebel and be something totally different from what I am.

Society wants to put us in a box and say, OK, you do this and you do that and you do this, and I'm like, no, I like this, I like that.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall

They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!

Didn't this beat everything? A pretty and an ugly taking a stroll together. The warden came closer, confusion all over his middle-pretty face. Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "Make me pretty.

In the 1950s that tug-of-war between the expectations of behaving normally and the limitlessness of thinking freely produces some very strange characters.

I went to public school for like, one day. I don't get it. Everybody tries to be exactly the same. I think being an outsider is a good thing.

I've been reckless, but I'm not a rebel without a cause.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.

I didn't rebel in the way a lot of people do.

I have trouble with direction, because I have trouble with authority. I was not a good Marine.

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups.

Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society.

The idea is not to please the most amount of people. Growing up in Versailles, the idea was to please the least amount of people.

Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it's easier, it scales and it's profitable. But people don't like it - we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.