Cheri Oteri Quotes

I never talk about 'Harry Potter' because I think that would rob children of something that's private to them. I think too many things get explained, so I hate talking about it.

I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.

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.

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 think pop culture underestimates people. The message is, 'Being yourself is the worst thing you could possibly be.' But people are still attracted to it.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.

I was never a skilled artist or anything like that - never a rebel.

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.

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

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

I have a really, really, really normal family. And by normal I mean we're all nuts on some level. I think you've gotta be a little nuts to pursue any kind of creative job. I was also a really good kid. I know that sounds really dull, but I didn't rebel in the traditional sense.

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

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

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

I went to an all-boys school and hated feeling like one of the crowd.

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

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

I didn't try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

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

Rather be dead than cool.

The nail that sticks out gets knocked down.

I was crawling out of the bedroom window with my older sister when I should have still been playing with dolls.

There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.