Erving Goffman Quotes

Sometimes, you just get a label and it sticks.

Stereotypes happen. I try not to embrace them or avoid them.

Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal.

I've been labeled all my life.

It’s all right that you do not understand my Theory of Relativity. I do not understand your Theory of Normalcy.

Once you've been painted as something it's very hard, especially when you're young, to wash that off.

Some people think I'm crazy, but I'm just a normal dude that loves music.

Why does everyone need to have a label?

Normal is all relative.

To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.

I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.

Normal is such a hard word to use, because everyone's idea of normal is different. Real is what the word is. I think you either live a real life or you live a weird celebrity pseudolife. I think I lead a really real life.

Though I had success in my research both when I was mad and when I was not, eventually I felt that my work would be better respected if I thought and acted like a 'normal' person.

I think people have a strong desire to push me and others into some sort of political box that they can wrap their minds around.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.

People expect me to be that guy. But I'm more east London boy than east Baltimore.

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.

People who don't know me look at my world as something very hard-core, and I don't feel it that way. It's not what attracts me.

People look at you, and they've got just the perfect little box for you, the perfect category. Call you a redneck. Call you a hillbilly. Like those were insults.

Funny how defined we are by how we present ourselves to the world.

I think people are a little surprised sometimes at the level on which I actually talk. I don't talk like Caine. And every once in a while, somebody is surprised because I smoke and I drink. But I don't feel that is a contradiction.

I always felt like reality was a bizarre place, and everybody was really good at being normal, and I didn't know how to do it.

Whether you're a dwarf, whether you're a midget, it's all branding.

When you have a name that means scares, you have to live with that.

Everyone is so into labeling themselves. I don't really put too much into that.