Steve Toltz Quotes

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.

The only behaviour that is truly common is to avoid doing something because you think others might consider it common.

I grew up in a small town where everyone wanted to be the same or look the same and was afraid to be different.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

Now, in music, it seems more like the popular crowd suppresses anyone who is different.

Everybody wants to be like everybody else.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

Everything's always about being homogenized and following in a group. The people who stand out always have the most problems.

When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.

It's a bit weird; everybody is trying to be different, but then they're exactly the same as whatever mob they hang out with.

I wasn't like the rest of the kids. I was an artist. Living in a black society, when you're raised around a bunch of boys who plays sports and chase girls, there's this perception of masculinity that's super hard to fit into. I wasn't the stereotype of that like a lot of my peers were.

I tried to be really nice and like the things other people liked and do the things other people were supposed to do, and what you find out is that they're going to bully you anyway. And I thought, 'You know what? If I'm going to get bullied anyway, I might as well get bullied for making a difference in the world.'

How can we choose to selectively follow what we find comfortable and attack anybody who tries to break free from the norms that we choose to set?

We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.

We laugh at sheep because sheep just follow the one in front. We humans have out-sheeped the sheep, because at least the sheep need a sheep dog to keep them in line. Humans keep each other in line. And they do it by ridiculing or condemning anyone who commits the crime, and that’s what it’s become, of being different.

Conformity is the ape of harmony.

I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself.

I've always balked at anything that feels like a clique, even if it's not always in my best interest to do so. I like each individual, fedora-wearing hipster - it's just the greater gestalt that rubs me the wrong way.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.

I didn't want to wear a checked shirt and grow a mustache - that's what you had to do, and everyone did.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.