Neko Case Quotes

People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people's perceptions are.

I think there's this pressure to get rid of the fun that makes us human. It hasn't worked on me.

I think we were just coming out and being ourselves, instead of operating within boundaries that other people had created. We decided to do away with those boundaries.

In our society, no one dares to be themselves.

People sometimes are afraid to be who they are because of other people's ideals.

when one is not expressing himself, he is not free. thus, he begins to struggle and the struggle breeds methodical routine. Soon, he is doing his methodical routine as response rather than responding to what is.

We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.

I don't want to be an icon. I want to be an idea. I want to represent possibilities.

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.

We all have to fight to maintain our unique style and taste in a world that would have us conform.

To live is to express oneself freely

I'm writing what I want to write. But it's almost an act of rebellion on my part. Because as a person, I've always wanted to be very likeable, and I think that's a horrible thing, particularly for women. You're always like, "Oh, I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings. I hope they like me!" And that's just so stupid.

I suppose maybe [Wilson] would be a better person if he were able to censor himself, but then he wouldn't be as interesting.

I feel like it's important, especially at young age, to find exactly what it is that makes your style so important as opposed to just trying to fit into the iconic styles of performers out there.

It's like, you can't have any fun, and if you do have fun, if you do your own thing, you're considered crazy and should be in a mental institution. Now, that's what I find creepy. I'm eccentric. I am not messed up.

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

People relate to the spirit of the band, which is to live your way and succeed on your own terms. There's no hypocrisy in being successful and still railing against conformity.

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

I'm going to be true to what I want to do, because if I care what people think about me, I'm a puppet. Which I have been in my life. And you can't live life that way, man!

Even if we're not doing anything wrong, there are certain things we want to do that we don't think can withstand the scrutinizing eye of other people. And those are often the most important things that we do. The things we do when other people are watching are things that are conformist, obedient, normal, and unnotable.

That's the very definition of freedom: to be allowed to develop our own creative potential to the fullest. But it doesn't have to be in the arts, obviously. In my case, I gravitated toward the arts.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

You don't want to spend your life explaining yourself.

I know that many people kill off their real personality just to fit into this society, but why do we have to compromise? I never understood that. I decided to try to be myself and to live by my own values rather than those of others.

But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it's less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, 'I know what I like doing and that's what I'm going to do.'