“Birthday resolution: From now on specialize; never again make any concession to the ninety-nine parts of you which are like everybody else at the expense of the one which is unique.”
Cyril Connolly
more infosource: The Unquiet Grave (New York: Persea Books, 1981), 95.
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category: birthday, individuality, resolution, self, specialize
medium: nonfiction
notes: Ernest Hemingway described The Unquiet Grave as “a book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough.”
“Sometimes the thing that’s weird about you is the thing that’s cool about you.”
Maureen Dowd
more infosource: “My Deathless Passion for Dracula,” The New York Times, July 2, 2010.
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category: cool, identity, individuality, quirk, self, weird
medium: Op-Ed
“When you’re young, and even at times when you’re older, it’s hard to fathom this: What needs to be nurtured is the stuff that’s different, that sets you apart from the pack, rather than the stuff that helps you blend in.”
Maureen Dowd
more infosource: “My Deathless Passion for Dracula,” The New York Times, July 2, 2010.
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category: advice, identity, individuality, school of life, self, unique
medium: Op-Ed
“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”
Don DeLillo
more infosource: Conversations with Don DeLillo (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), p.143.
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category: freedom, identity, individuality, survival, writing
medium: letter
notes: This comes from a letter Don DeLillo wrote to Jonathan Franzen
individuality