A Quote by Dan Chaon
The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.
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The feeling of being an outsider was a big part of my childhood. I think that helps comedians. That feeling of being an outsider. That desire for a perspective that's all your own. The idea for me to make stuff myself with my own meaning came from that as well.
In some ways, my most comfortable feeling has been that of being an outsider coming in, but over the years I've tired of that and I'm ready to feel at home. That's what music gives me: a feeling of absolute home.
I had always been wary of doing any autobiographical movies, truly feeling at home with fiction.
I always had this put-together family, and I always identified as the outsider. And that's a position where I feel most comfortable, and yet I feel an incredible longing to belong. That is really a strong feeling from my childhood - a desire to be part of a group.
You go through your life feeling like an outsider, and you respond to society in a different way when you feel like an outsider.
No matter what you eventually become - free, empowered - the lingering feeling of 'once an outsider, always an outsider' is very vivid for me.
Unworthiness is the inmost frightening thought that you do not belong, no matter how much you want to belong, that you are an outsider and will always be an outsider. It is the idea that you are flawed and cannot be fixed. It is wanting to be loved and feeling unlovable, or wanting to love and feeling that you are not capable of loving.
I think being funny had something to do with feeling like an outsider, not feeling cool - insecurity.
There is no better feeling than the feeling that I have done something right. That feeling comes so rarely and is so fleeting that I can never really enjoy it. So in a way, it's not a good feeling at all.
I think it's really difficult for folks that aren't transgender to really wrap their mind around the feeling of having a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth. But for me, it felt like a constant feeling of homesickness.
My main theme as a songwriter seems to be a feeling of homelessness, of being in motion. The feeling of being somehow unmoored, a radical internal freedom that is very painful and also joyful.
I've talked about tall poppy syndrome when I see people. I used to be like, 'Why am I feeling this way? What is that person taking from me that makes me feel inadequate?' That same feeling you feel when you feel uncomfortable because people start talking about racism, lean into that feeling, don't just look away from it, because you can't pretend.
I tend to write about people. I look at things from the bottom up and from the perspective of outsiders. A part of me just identifies with them. It's my messed up internal nature that I always feel like an outsider. It's just my nature. At film festivals, I was an outsider for sure, but I always felt like one as well. I have that feeling at parties, too. I don't belong there.
I think a lot of 'Edward Scissorhands' was about the suburban world that Burton grew up in feeling like an outcast. I feel like there's no way it's not at least a little autobiographical from that standpoint. I always liked that.
Self-esteem and identity are very fragile things. I think a lot of times, those are the motivations for why people do take their own lives - not being seen, not being recognized, not being loved, not feeling supported, not feeling understood.
I'm always looking for ways to connect myself with American people and that American feeling. I'm trying to pick up on the feeling of places, like the Los Angeles feeling or the New York feeling... Los Angeles is much better for me that way.
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