Ani DiFranco Quotes

I think anyone who's willing to be brutally honest with who they are and express themselves is always going to get the oddball label, the pyscho label, the twisted label. That's what happens.

'Divergent' is a story about people who don't fit into a category - that is a big part of the message - but it's also about conformity and forcing people into these simple archetypes. At the end of the day, humans don't exist like that. We're multifaceted.

I dyed my hair about 42 different colours, and kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different. But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is also probably why I was unhappy.

I was a brownie for a day. My mom made me stop. She didn't want me to conform.

I was labeled a troublemaker, my mom an unfit mother, and I was not welcome anywhere.

One resists categorization at one's peril.

I've always wrestled against being typified in one way or another.

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.

People like to put you into a box. I'm afraid I don't sit in a box.

Kids are the most conventional people in the world. It is more important than anything else for them to conform, and I was a kind of oddball. I was driven into being independent. I was very, very unhappy.

I tried to be different; I didn't want to be like everybody else.

I just understand that I'm supposed to be one of those people that disrupts the flavor a little bit instead of being part of the same sound as everyone else.

There's not enough people being daring and different. There are a lot of followers in hip-hop.

I may be crazy, but that don't make me wrong.

Of course I know I am not the average footballer. But I'd be lying if I said I set out to be different, I didn't set out to go against the grain.

Whenever the word 'weird' is mentioned it can only be an insult.

I always tried to be different from everyone else. Then I found out about boxing. That was the way I could be different from everyone else. I always went against the crowd.

Since I can remember, being different was always hard around normal people. That's just how it is, whether you have vitiligo, a deformity, or a different way of thinking or dressing. It's going to always be weird for normal people.

I think, my entire life, I was a bit different. And I didn't think I was different; I just kinda always stuck out.

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.'

Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here.

Who's straight? I'm not. I am bent gouged pinched and tugged at, and squeezed into this funny shape. Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move, and now the flukey play is cramped and slow, a dream of constraint and cross-purpose, with each move forced, all pieces pinned and skewered and zugzwanged... But here and there we see these figures who appear to run on the true lines, and they are terrible examples. They're rich, usually.

We must honor our dragons, encourage them to be worthy destroyers, expect they'll strive to cut us down. It is their duty to ridicule us, it is their job to demean us, to force us if they can to stop being different! And when we walk our way no matter their fire and their fury, our dragons shrug when we're out of sight, return to their card-games philosophical: 'Ah well, we can't toast 'em all...'

You could fly under the radar a little bit. You could be a weird kid without defaulting to gay, without everyone assuming you must be gay - that was literally the last place many people went.

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them