I can be lazy, don't get me wrong. But it's not laziness that's holding me back, it's the system where I don't fit in.
When I was in my teens and twenties, I could see friends expressing how radical they were, and I envied them, the way they lived, the way they dressed. Maybe there is a part of me that is reserved, even in rebellion.
I don't work well outside the lines; my report card once read, 'doesn't play well with others.'
Everything you think you're supposed to feel even, or do. When it doesn't match up with what everything that the culture is telling you to do, you feel like a failure.
I went to Northwestern because I had gone to a really nontraditional high school. I was like, 'It'd be cool to have a traditional college experience.' Then I was like, 'Oh, but none of these people understand what's cool about me. My specialness is not appreciated in this place.'
Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.
I always tried to fit in, so I was a cheerleader with the orange skin and white-blonde hair, and Hooters was part of that.
Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.
The perpetuation of family and cultural pressures to conform to prescribed masculine behaviors is what creates social isolation and distress in many young gay and trans people of color.
It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.
I felt trapped and fabricated in the fifties living up to other people's expectations.
Well, he's just the same guy who in other aspects of his life would be very late to a trend.
It isn't till now, in the American Century, as we have recklessly dubbed it, that tribal pressures toward conformity have been brought to bear so ruthlessly upon men and women seeking to work creatively.
We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.
I've never actually been exposed to the hardships that proper soldiers endure. I also think you need a particular constitution to be a soldier - built a certain way and wired a certain way. I don't know if I'd be too good with being told what to do all the time. I am a law-abider, but I've got a lot of questions and opinions, so maybe not.
I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you.
I would not be very comfortable doing the regular thing which we see on TV.
There have been situations where the people you're around have one vision for you, and it's like trying on a jacket that doesn't fit.
That's me. I can be me a bit at home, but I'm kind of like a square peg in a round hole.
