#normality

Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets, college kids were planning their next ski trip and discussing the new Police album. We could have been in any city in Japan. Transplant this coffee shop scene to Yokohama or Fukuoka and nothing would seem out of place. In spite of which -- or, rather, all the more because -- here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here. Of course, by the same token, I couldn't really say I belonged to Tokyo and its coffee shops. But I had never felt this loneliness there. I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#coffee-shops #loneliness #normality #outsider #reclaim

When I was a teenager, I thought nothing would ever happen to me because my childhood was so normal. I had this complex of normality. ↗

— Audrey Tautou

#childhood #complex #ever #had #happen

I wanted to reject it all because I was sick of being perfect. I was so bored with normality and dreams of poster boys and tabloid covers. ↗

— J. Merridew

#normalcy #normality #perfection #dreams

Normality wasn't in the days I'd left behind me: it was only to be found in whatever fortune placed in my path each morning. ↗

— María Dueñas

#life-philosophy #normality #past-and-future #life

There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#normality #conformity

There is a subconscious way of taking violence as a way of expression, as a normality, and it has a lot of effects in the youth in the way they absorb education and what they hope to get out of life. ↗

— Salma Hayek

#education #effects #expression #get #hope