Normal

“Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)”
– Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“There are ways of growing that are not growing up.”
– Katherine Bond Stockton, The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century

“Every utopia . . . faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?”
– Margaret Atwood

“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
– Jerry Seinfeld

“What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?”
– Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

“For African Americans, unfreedom is the historical norm.”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”

“The English language started out as a distortion in my life, but nothing remains the same,
and so the distortion is now just normal. That is one of the things that will happen to all distortions:
They become normal and turn into something else.”
– Jamaica Kincaid

“The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these
accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making
us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?”
– John Lennon

“Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains—daisy chains—of interactivity.
Social actions are makeshift forms, often courageous, sometimes ridiculous, always strange.
And in a way, every social action is a negotiation, a compromise between ‘his,’ ‘her’ or ‘their’ wish and yours.”
– Andy Warhol

“It is not possible to preserve one’s identity by adjusting for any length of time to a
frame of reference that is in itself destructive to it.”
– Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

“Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.”
– Whoopi Goldberg

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,
mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time . . .”
– Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”
– Dorothy Parker

“Is anything as strange as a normal person? /
Is anyone as cruel as a normal person? /
Waiting after school for you /
They want to know if you /
If you’re normal too /
Well, are you? /
Are you?”
– Arcade Fire, “Normal Person”