The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.
I didn't follow any rules at all. I made my own.
My grandmother, who was simultaneously a woman of manners and verve, fended off marriage proposals until she was 30 because she was having too much fun to settle down.
I started growing my hair in December '89. I was seventeen. I signed my record deal and said I ain't combing my hair no more. I don't have too.
Japanese of my generation try to get through life without stepping on anyone's toes; in some ways that's unnatural and stressful. The yakuza are different: They live short lives but live and die on their own terms - it's exciting to portray that.
All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.
A little rebellion is a good thing.
To hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.
You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!
...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.
I never would just open a door and walk through, I had to bust it down for the hell of it. I just naturally liked doing things the hard way.
Everyone always asks, 'Did you ever rebel? Did you dye your hair blue? Did you wear black nail polish?' I mean, of course, there have been episodes when you wear weird-colored lipstick... But generally, I think I was pretty much the way I am now.
I've always played it my way. I failed media training, for example.
Rules are made to be broken, so there won't be any rules.
I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.
There's a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there's a lot of compromise that goes with that.
We have been impossible right from the beginning and we must continue to be impossible because we are raising a voice against suffering which has been considered to be the nature of life. It is our joy to be considered impossible - and it is our greater joy to make the impossible a living reality.
I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation. If I can just hold out till I'm thirty, I'll be incredible.
My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.
