Outsider Quotes

An outsider's point of view is always handy. ~ Pat Oliphant

The sensation that had plagued me after graduating, of being on the outside of some mystery, peeking in, returned. ~ Olivia Sudjic

I've been labelled many times - a criminal, an anarchist, a rebel, sometimes human garbage, but never a philosopher, which is a pity because that's what I am. I chose a life apart from the common flow, not only because the common flow makes me sick but because I question the logic of the flow, and not only that - I don't know if the flow exists! Why should I chain myself to the wheel when the wheel itself might be a construct, an invention, a common dream to enslave us? ~ Steve Toltz

A real politician, and these were real politicians, never betrays his country to an outsider. He betrays it to himself. He is the enemy within. ~ Guy Endore

Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive. That is what happened to me in Eden Park. ~ Trevor Noah

That's what I love about you. You're a freak. Like me. ~ Shane Kuhn

As an outsider in America, you do see the kind of hypocrisy that's rampant there. ~ Ben Mendelsohn

I have always wondered what it would have been like for an outsider to have witnessed firsthand the gathering dark of Hitler's rule. How did the city look, what did one hear, see, and smell, and how did diplomats and other visitors interpret the events occurring around them? Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to recognize the real danger posed by Hitler and his regime? ~ Erik Larson

I have been an outsider in journalism and in the academy, because I never fully belonged to any of them. ~ Garry Wills

In a market economy, a main determinant of social standing is participation in the labor market and the associated willingness to 'self-commodify' (e.g., Esping-Andersen 1999), the latter term nicely emphasizing how market economies render all forms of worth, even self-worth, a function of market valuation. When individuals fail to self-commodify, they fall outside the most fundamental institutions of the society, thereby reducing them to nonentities and social ciphers. This is why a mere transfer of income to the underclass... is inconsequential in relieving feelings of social exclusion. If anything, such a transfer only draws attention to the initial failure to self-commodify. although a class map also embodies distinctions of social standing among those who have an enduring commitment to the labor market, the social divide between the underclass and all other classes looms especially large because it captures this fundamental insider-outsider distinction. ~ Ravi Kanbur

What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it's that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness of
normality that is just a myth. ~ Anne Rice

Outsider means "I will accept the possibility that I don't have responsibility for what is happening inside my domain." ~ Aleksandar Hemon

I recently heard a great writer say that an essential element in the life of a writer is to have been an outsider in childhood, to have been given the "gift" of not belonging. ~ Elizabeth Lesser

No disrespect to any other god, but Shiva's an outsider god. He breaks the rules. He's a brilliant musician, a brilliant dancer; he treats his wife as an equal, and she opposes him many times, but he obsessively loves her. ~ Amish Tripathi

While I have always, felt like an outsider, it's because of the professional choices I have made, so it's not like I am planning to throw myself a giant pity party. ~ Anna Paquin

I use primal imagery, so maybe it's fitting that I use the most primitive of cameras [pinhole cameras]. Since there's no viewfinder, the image is much more of a surprise - as if some outsider came and looked at earth for the first time. ~ Barbara Ess

She (his future wife) was so deep into the Lord's presence that I felt like an outsider. ~ Jeremy Camp

I am blessed, personally, beyond measure, and yet oddly enough, I, too, struggle to feel His love for me every day. When I stack my obstacles against others' they seem to frivolous to be authentic. And yet, this mortal existence is designed by a genius, so that we all will, no matter our circumstances or parentage or gifts, have to exercise our agency to come to Him. And so though my problems may seem small to an outsider, they are big enough for me to desperately need Him. ~ Virginia H. Pearce

Souls are like stars. There are thousands upon thousands around us yet we only see a few hundred. We know the names of only a handful of them even though we see them every day. They are just there, they are constant. Some change over the years but some stay exactly the same. We can see that some are in pairs and their whole world revolves around each other. Yet there are stars that exist in solitude. They are alone in the big black vastness of space and they have no hope of reaching others in their lifetime. They burn bright; maybe brighter than most but they are alone. They might have a few things around them but those are insignificant and invisible to the outsider. Sometimes when two stars get closer to each other, they affect the other's course, they become brighter for each other but as time passes they get further and further from one another until they blend into the rest, they become strangers again. But the affect remains and their future will never be the same from then on. ~ Daniel Gyorki

The US remains an object of fascination for me, and the subject of much study, but while many of my friends etc. are American and I have no plans at present to move elsewhere, I consider myself a permanent outsider. ~ Luc Sante

There's a kind of edge to what you're doing, the kind of leading edge of what you're doing. Inside that edge [are elements you] are familiar with, and are probably becoming slightly bored with, as well, over a period of time. "I've pulled that one out before. Oh, no, I can't I'm just fed up with that. Let's do something else."And you always think "Oh my God I've never done anything at all like that before." But, of course, in retrospect, and to an outsider, they'll say, "Oh, yeah that's typical Eno." ~ Brian Eno

Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort. ~ Anne Rice

I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music. ~ Janis Ian

I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body. ~ Seneca The Younger

Being an outsider means not being heard, not having a voice. It means being treated as a second-class citizen, being diminished in the eyes of others. We have all felt this way at one time or another, but some feel it more consistently. Unfortunately, our schools often do not embrace the talents of many of their occupants. ~ Chris Crutcher

In a city, with all of its enclaves and boundaries, both real and imagined, it is impossible not to feel the presence of those who are not like you and impossible not to feel like an outsider. ~ Kate Milford

I was always an outsider, proud of being an outsider. I always reveled in the outsiders. ~ John Zorn

The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life. ~ Jackie Kennedy

He didn't seem to understand yet was that I didn't really care about the ways of Washington. ~ Elizabeth Warren

I think, at the end of the day, I have an outsider's heart. ~ Tift Merritt

Dennis is the person who organizes everything in our lives. To the casual outsider, it would seem grossly unfair. He owns a company, he handles all our money, he manages our lives. While I sit and write, Dennis does everything else. When I try to accept additional responsibilities, I make a mess and he has to fix whatever I broke. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I think it's different in fashion, because even if I would be an outsider, I would still be in the middle of the whole world of contemporary fashion. But it's interesting to think what outsider fashion could be. Does it mean to be completely disconnected from the regular system or just disconnected style-wise? ~ Raf Simons

The notion of the hero as outsider, as alien, is forget it, over, done with. It's not about being against society anymore. It's about standing there, holding something up. It's not pulling away. ~ Twyla Tharp

I'm truly an outsider in the poetry world. When I started writing, I was trying to move my poems away from modernist lines. ~ Richard Grossman

I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to. ~ Ang Lee

Some of us are fated to live in a box from which there is only temporary release. We of the damned-up spirits, of the thwarted feelings, of the blocked hearts, and the pent-up thoughts, we who long to blast out, flood forth in a torrent of rage or joy or even madness, but there is nowhere for us to go, nowhere in the world because no one will have us as we are, and there is nothing to do except to embrace the secret pleasures of our sublimations, the arc of a sentence, the kiss of a rhyme, the image that forms on paper or canvas, the inner cantata, the cloistered embroidery, the dark and dreaming needlepoint from hell or heaven or purgatory or none of those three, but there must be some sound and fury from us, some clashing cymbals in the void. ~ Siri Hustvedt

The outsider is not sure who he is. He has found an "I", but it is not his true "I".' His main business is to find his way back to himself. ~ Colin Wilson

I always felt like something of an outsider. But I identified with people up on the screen. That made me feel like I wanted to be up on the screen too. I felt like eventually I would get there. ~ Luke Perry

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf. ~ Michael Lewis

Every politician just has to remember how he got his position in the first place. A young candidate running for Congress or any outsider interested in public office could only achieve his goals by relying on soft power. They could not force anyone to vote for them. They needed to convince their potential voters, they needed to do fundraising, they needed to be attractive candidates. ~ Joseph Nye

I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father. ~ Anthony Hopkins

Halt!" Marco remained hidden behind the door. "This area is restricted." The voice sounded distorted. It must have been an Outsider in a mask. ~ Dayna Lorentz

Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed. ~ John O'Donohue

I was sort of like a kid in a candy store, realizing it was fun making beats without the perceived burden that every track I did had to be a some progressive sample masterpiece. It was nice to blow off steam and work on those songs. For me, that's what 'The Outsider' was about in general: forget everything, I'm just gonna follow my own music, and make the music I want to make. ~ DJ Shadow

One of the things we love about Po [Kung Fu Panda] is that he's vulnerable. He's someone that we can all identify with because he has those insecurities. He's an outsider feeling guy. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson

I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider. ~ Ethel Waters

Zoe stopped one last time in front of the mirror, adjusting her new American dress. She didn't see the dress, however. She saw what the big Russian did to her. She saw what al-Qaeda did to her. She saw a person shunned by her Persian village. She saw ugliness. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw deficiency. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

But the outsider in May, the one from Briery Swamp who had never fit quite right, kept her tucked safely in her nook. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

I was the outsider in Fernhall House, but they were all outsiders really. Outside society. Outside time. You hear people say that those in asylums and care facilities are out of their minds. But in truth their minds are often the one thing they are not out of. Their whole being is sheltering behind walls of muscle and bone. Everything they are - and are not - exists within their sacrosanct headspace. ~ Jonathan Lee

It's quite clear : an outsider can, on principle, only value foreign literature that translates well; the truly great artists of language and the fecund experimenters are inaccessible to him; are usually unknown to him in fact ! ~ Arno Schmidt

Just then, Larry recalled a conversation he had with a friend in Ireland, about the situation in Nepal between the King and the Maoists. The friend was sided with the Maoists, which was more or less his political leanings in any case, and stated that at least they were trying to help the people. So Larry had remarked upon the rising death rate, and how the Maoists are just as brutal as the security forces, yet the friend simply shrugged and said you have to expect some collateral damage in a revolution.
Oh how he hates that phrase, as that makes it sound like the people's lives are meant to be expendable, something that a person's life should never be. Of course, it is very easy to disregard people you have never met, and who are certainly not your friends or family members. After all, in the eyes of an outsider, who is in no danger whatsoever, the people caught up in the situation are nothing more than simply statistics. ~ Andrew James Pritchard

Mimetic theory explains the presence of disabilities and infirmities in a great many mythical stories. When there is no ground for making a victim of someone - because he isn't guilty of anything - people act as children do and make a scapegoat of someone who is physically unattractive, or who is an outsider. The number of outsiders in myths is quite extraordinary. And why are so many victims lame? My work is scientific because it tries to solve the puzzle constituted by these clues, to explain why outsiders, many of them handicapped, are made into victims and forcibly expelled from a community. The burden falls on anyone who doubts my theory to supply a better explanation, or else to adopt mine for want of a more satisfactory one. ~ Rene Girard

I have always been considered a bit of an outsider, and a general failure at everything I put my hand towards. In fact, you might even go so far as to say that I'm a lesser being of great insignificance! I state this because, when writing a story, you should always start the first line off with at least one basic truth.
-First lines from the novel Sukiyaki ~ Andrew James Pritchard

If you're running for office, it's tough to be an incumbent. It's tough to run out of Washington. It's better to be an outsider. And Establishment support doesn't help; it more likely hurts. ~ Mark McKinnon

Punk can be a mental ghetto. People get into it and make all these rules and pretty soon they're worse than born again Christians and have stupid three hour conversation about things like, which band is a sellout and is straight edge cool or un-cool and it's just completely idiotic. So punk has taught me the aesthetic of the outsider, which is great, but it's also taught me not to get involved in petty little cults. ~ Jesse Michaels

Every calling is marked by a season of insignificance, a period when nothing seems to make sense. This is a time of wandering in the wilderness, when you feel alone and misunderstood. To the outsider, such a time looks like failure, as if you are grasping at air or simply wasting time. But the reality is this is the most important experience a person can have if they make the most of it. ~ Jeff Goins

But when someone is on a winning horse, and everything looks wonderful, it's very hard as an outsider to persuade them something is wrong. ~ James Wolfensohn

I watched my brother and sister interact with their grandparents and their mother. I could see the shared connection that comes only with years of being a family, years of history with one another, and waves of sadness crashed over me. I would never have that connection with them; those years were truly gone. As Pat had missed watching me grow, I had missed seeing my siblings grow, and I still felt like an outsider. Paradoxically, reunion helped in many ways to fill the void, but in other ways it made the void bigger than ever. ~ Zara Phillips

I always loved horror as a kid. On the one hand, I really love monsters, because in a way I feel like I related to their outsider status and like the sentimental romantic plight of the monster. More importantly though I feel like people are completely motivated by fear, especially with our political system here in America which is just degenerating into more and more fear mongering and it gets in the way of real discourse, plus it's just something I'm obsessive about and have always been a little bit of a paranoid guy. ~ Larry Fessenden

The bowl that emerged was one of those gifts whose first impact produces in the recipient's mind a colored image, a blazoned blur, reflecting with such emblematic force the sweet nature of the donor that the tangible attributes of the thing are dissolved, as it were, in this pure inner blaze, but suddenly and forever leap into brilliant being when praised by an outsider to whom the true glory of the object is unknown. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You guys are so caught up in your polished images and your passive-aggressive comments that no one ever comes right out and says anything. Well, I'm going to. ~ Richelle Mead

I've never wanted to be part of an inner circle of any scene. I've always been an outsider looking to question and subvert. ~ David LaChapelle

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole. ~ Oscar Wilde

Everywhere you are a stranger.' Finished Iskra with seeming carelessness, and quickly and unceremoniously placed a beret with turkey feathers on her head. 'An Outsider everywhere and always different. How shall we call you, little hawk?' Ciri looked into her eyes. 'Gvalch'ca.' The elf laughed. 'Once you start to speak, you speak in multiple languages, little hawk! Very good. You will carry the name from the Elder People, a name that you yourself have chosen. You will be called Falka. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

I'm in nobody's circle, I've always been an outsider. ~ Joan Rivers

I am not an outsider. I am an insider who discovered that everyone else had gone out. ~ Stephen J. Day

Mom has no idea that I want to go to Our Lady of Sorrows just to investigate a haunting.
I have a gut feeling I'm going to be an outsider at this school, but that's the price I pay for being a psychic investigator. Like my Master Psychic's Handbook says, Being a psychic isn't a normal career, like being a doctor or a lawyer. At some point, there may be a price to pay for such an unusual, misunderstood lifestyle. ~ Jennifer Allison

People build something that works. Then circumstances change, and they have to tinker with it to make it continue to work, and they are so busy tinkering that they cannot see that a much better idea would be to build a whole new system to deal with the new circumstances. But to an outsider, the idea is obvious. ~ Terry Pratchett

If people's night fears of sorcery - which negatively influences their decision to use mosquito nets - fail to impress the outsider, the brute everyday reality remains; in a number of rural African villages it is still much too common for very real hyenas to snatch people, especially children, out of their own homes as they lie sleeping at night, because of the lack of a good front door. ~ T.K. Naliaka

It's easy to gravitate toward something negative as opposed to something positive, especially if you're an outsider. ~ Blake Judd

Survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support. ~ Audre Lorde

I've always been an outsider. Even in London. If I returned to Scotland, I'd feel a complete foreigner. ~ Peter Doig

I don't think that the despiritualised, dehumanised culture in which we live, the McDonalds and Disney culture, does our internal lives, our mythological lives, any favours at all. In other words, to be an Outsider in this culture now is to be looking inside at a plastic world, and I think it's easier to critique that world if I don't belong to it ... In Hollywood where I live now, there's a lot of having lunches, a lot of going to parties ... and I will have no part of that. I'm certainly not very good at it, I don't like it and I feel a little weird about it. I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be a part of the solution, and the only way I can help solve the problem of the plasticity of our world is by writing, by painting and by making my work, so I stay where I can do that, which is at my desk, in my studio. I will venture out when I need to sell a book or exhibit my paintings, but the rest of the time my job is to be here and imagine. ~ Clive Barker

When you succeed, everyone wants to be part of it; but when you fail everyone seems outsider. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

The real secret, though, is that nobody belongs, whether they are natives or not. After expulsion from paradise all humans are in exile. You can be a Colonel Sanders chicken, born, raised and fried in one quarter of a square foot and you'll still be an outsider. The thing we call reality is a holding tank for people who must worry about belonging -- it's a worrier prison. Don't worry people! You'll soon be fried and eaten. A few of us are writers, hence double-alienated, but happier (because we are busy)
If it's true that many of us go through life feeling like we don't belong, could digression (geographical and otherwise) be our way of trying to forget, or to escape, that feeling?

Bad news: there are no digressions. Everything is connected in the whole darn ball of yarn: start pulling at any end and you'll get to the same place. On the other hand, most normal people dislike digression because they have to lose themselves to follow you. The surest way to drive your dear ones crazy is to digress. In private, it's an offense. In public it's "art," "performance. ~ Andrei Codrescu

A mediator is an impartial outsider who tries to aid the negotiators in their quest to find a compromise agreement. ~ Howard Raiffa

One of our most deep-seated fears is that we might be called an "outsider." This fear has led us down the road to conformity, has put the imprint of "the organization man" on our souls, and has robbed us of originality of thought, individuality of personality, and constructive action. ~ Billy Graham

Geeks are running the world, anyone who's seen The Social Network knows the dynamic has shifted, but what I think is iconic and timeless about Peter Parker is that he's an outsider, on the outside looking in, and that was something I thought was very important to protect. ~ Marc Webb

He wondered whether in fact, he had always been an outsider in the family, and whether he had so placed himself, or whether his parents and sisters had so elected him. ~ Bernice Rubens

With her parents modeling such brutal favoritism, Sallie joined right in. She constantly belittled Tina and joined in with the taunts of the bullies on the bus. When an outsider sees a family member participating in abuse of another family member, the outsider quickly realizes it is okay to do the same. No one cared about this girl, not even her sister or parents, and Diane and I would sometimes join in on the teasing and taunts. ~ Kat Spencer

The Whorl, whose inhabitants keep watch for an outsider ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Tell how it is normal to be very comfortable on the outside but very uncomfortable on the inside. Tell how funny it all is. But tell a little something else, too. What can it hurt? Tell a little something else--about how you can be a nonconformist and about how you can be an outsider. And tell how you are entitled to a little privacy. But for goodness' sake, say all that very softly. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. ~ Stephen Fry

Inside I'll always be an outsider ~ Eminem

Stuart Hall was an utterly unique figure. Although he arrived at the age of 19 from Jamaica and spent the rest of his life here, he never felt at home in Britain. This juxtaposition was a crucial source of his strength and originality. Because of his colour and origin, he saw the country differently - not as a native, but as an outsider. ~ Martin Jacques

Approach every situation as an outsider for best results. ~ Haresh Sippy

Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant. ~ Erma Bombeck

What if I'll always be the person on the outside? The person who doesn't belong."
"You belong, Echo," he says against my temple. "Right here with me. ~ Katie McGarry

In every society the artist or writer remains an outsider ... ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Everyone in life knows what it's like to be picked on and to feel like an outsider. ~ Ryan Kwanten

I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider, but I discovered theatre very early on, which got me through. ~ Eric McCormack

If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong. ~ David Brin

As an outsider I was free to pick my own literary traditions, to build my own system of literary values. ~ Dubravka Ugresic

I've always straddled a weird line - there's a lot of mainstream stuff that I love. At the same, I still feel like an outsider. I'm the outsider who's on the inside. ~ Zooey Deschanel

The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity. ~ Aldous Huxley

If they cannot forgive me my foibles, then they are not such good people, no?"...

"But they do forgive your foibles. They would welcome your company, too. But if you joined them, you would not understand what they were talking about. You would not have had the experiences that bind them together. You would be an outsider, not because of any act of theirs, but because you have not passed along the road that teaches you to be one of them. You will feel like an exile from the beautiful garden, but it will be you who exiled yourself. And yet you will blame them, and call them judgmental and unforgiving, even as it is your own pain and bitter memory that condemns you, your own ignorance of virtue that makes you a stranger in the land that should have been your home. ~ Orson Scott Card

I see individuals whose lives have been so protected that they seem like pearls nestled in velvet jewelry cases. I cannot empathize. ~ Wendy Hoffman

Jarod Kintz likes writing about himself in the third person, because he really relates to the third person. The odd man out. If two is company, then the first person and the second person are just fine together. But why is the third person always hanging around? Jarod often feels like that outsider, the person on the smallest pedestal, the bronze medalist of personal pronouns. If the third person makes you feel like she-it, then maybe you can relate to some of Jarod's work. ~ Jarod Kintz

On 'Dawson's Creek,' those kids were supposed to be outsider kids - you know, wrong-side-of-the-track kids, weirdo kids. And I just felt like there's no universe out there where Katie Holmes isn't the prom queen, hottest girl in school. ~ Rob Thomas

Tremendous beauty and tremendous ugliness puts you on the outside of things. ~ Peter Bogdanovich