Rabih Alameddine Quotes

You know, our sense of individuality is just the number one target of civilization.

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.

Imitation is very easy, and the whole culture and society depends on imitation. Everybody is telling you how to behave, and whatsoever they are teaching you is nothing but imitation. Religious people - the so-called religious people, the priests, the theologians - they are also teaching you, 'Be like Jesus, be like Buddha, be like Krishna.' Nobody ever tells you, 'Just be yourself' - nobody. Everybody is against you, it seems. Nobody allows you to be yourself, nobody gives you any freedom. You can be in this world, but you must imitate somebody.

I try to define myself through my own choices rather than just accepting society's kind of you're that, you're that, let me put you in a box kind of thing.

It's lame to say that I'm a normal girl, but I think I am.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

I describe myself as a human being.

I try not to define myself. Other people are going to do that for you anyway.

I try to be as normal as I can.

Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality.

We all want to be special, to stand out; there's nothing wrong with this. The irony is that every human being is special to start with, because we're unique to start with. But we then go through some sort of boot camp from the age of zero to about 18 where we learn everything we can about how not to be unique.

How dull it is to have people defining you.

For one thing I tend not to see myself in various moulds that people fit me into.

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.

Society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

I love tennis. But even if I become the greatest of all time, I still don't only want to be defined by tennis. I'm my own person. And I want to be remembered as I really am.

I don't want to be someone else.

The last thing I want to think of myself as is anything different.

This is not me, WWE doesn't define who Ashley is.

I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.