
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the normal people as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger. Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.” — Timothy Leary


Our streets must be teeming with accidental strangers, who just happened to miss their cue—who share everything in common, except for time and place.
John Koenig • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
“Be Your Unapologetically Weird Self” “I gave a commencement speech in Minnesota few years ago [at the Carlson School of Management]. The core of it was to be your unapologetically weird self. I think authenticity is one of the most lacking things out there these days.” An excerpt from that speech: “Weirdness is why we adore our friends. . . . Weir
... See moreTimothy Ferriss • Tools Of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
Not the outsider as portrayed in the movies by chain-smoking, brooding dudes with motorcycles and leather jackets, but the person who views himself as truly different and takes a keen, cold, critical eye to what society deems normal. Later, when I would attend the Graduate
Rainn Wilson • The Bassoon King: Art, Idiocy, and Other Sordid Tales from the Band Room
Everybody is an outsider, if you go deep enough. The trick is reassuring people that you’re their kind of outsider.”