I'm going to do everything I can to keep from being mainstream.
To middle-class parents, the project team may have seemed unfit for children, but it was exactly what I needed.
It's like, 'You're not allowed to change. That's not fair. We like you like this.' But I don't. So let me expand and express myself.
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned.
I feel like being into the beat of your own drum has become too prominent in the culture.
When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.
Growing up in Seattle, I was always that kid who didn't subscribe to what everyone else was wearing.
To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.
I've never tried to be like anybody else. I'm a non-conformist in every way, and when it comes to wrestling, that's certainly true, too.
I don't play a regular guy at all - never.
My music confuses people because they think I will sound a certain way because I look a certain way with the dreads.
I always wanted to be different. If it was different I liked it. And it wasn't because I was just trying so hard to be different, it's just by nature.
I like to go against the grain, against what's out there. Every day is like a challenge.
I've always wanted to do things different, always wanted to be the person who stands out from the pack.
Yeah, but if you're not doing what everyone else is doing then you're going to be misunderstood. People are going to wonder why you're trying to be different; it's just a natural instinct.
Coming from an immigrant background, where a lot of parents don't want their kids to be comedians, success was just showing my mom that I could make a living. I was like, if I can get my mom off my back, that was my success.
You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.
I don't want to be fake. I'm just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.
In my world, of course, it don't matter. You could be a gangster with a dress, you could be a gangster with baggy pants.
Not playing by the rules, not seeing things conventionally, that's the heart of who he [ Steve Jobs] is, and he does it in small ways of everyday rebellion just almost to assert who he is, like not putting a license plate on his car.
If you have something to say, then say it. Express yourself and break the rules.
Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal.
There's poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don't like doing what people expect me to do.
I love to be individual, to step beyond gender.
