Misfits Quotes

“What a brilliant thing, to discover we’ve been wrong about some things, what a brilliant thing it is to grow.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“the only power we have is the power to say “no.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“Speaking can be a terrifying action. Our words—even when spoken from a position so powerless that all that’s produced is a moth-like squeak—can be loud enough to wake the house: a house that is often sleeping peacefully and does not want to be disturbed; a house in which perhaps you’ve found a home.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I've decided to embrace as many perspectives as i can, and be brave enough to update my beliefs, and discover I'm not always right.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“What I can do is be transparent about my experiences, because transparency helps.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I’ve been urged to understand someone “isn’t racist” on every job I’ve acted in since, just by pointing out possible patterns, tendencies. When I agree they aren’t racist, but suggest they may be thoughtless on the matter, it doesn’t go down very well. But if you’re not racist, or thoughtless about race, what other thing can you be?”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“[T]here is a beauty in carving your own story, conceiving it, at least once, alone, then allowing others to assist in nurturing and maturing it. Particularly for unheard voices, the voices denied, or for those who, given the opportunity to speak, find themselves surrendering to immediate interruption[.]”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“Is it important that voices used to interruption get the experience of writing something without interference at least once?”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I had no practice; obviously, I was an outsider.

Yes, outsider. Not in a bad way, I wasn't out in the rain. I just wasn't here.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I have asked myself what it is about moths that bothered me and most of us so much. Why did we kill them while we drew, collected and chased butterflies as children? Why was the moth excluded from this adoration and left to flutter the skies as a commercially unattractive misfit? And what made them so mesmerized by the very thing that often killed them? And what can happen in your life when you comfort or embrace the things that repel you?”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I learned that staying silent for fear of losing safety doesn't compare to the feeling of safety I found within myself from choosing to be fearless in my curiosity to question the house, to question the very identity of the house, and from choosing to question myself.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“How can we help each other to fix a faulty system? Surely, we can help each other to fix a faulty house.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“The misfit doesn't climb in pursuit of safety, or profit; she climbs to tell stories. She gets off the ladder and onto the swings; swinging back and forth, sometimes aggressively, sometimes standing up on the swing, back and forth, in pursuit of only transparency, observing the changes, but wonders if these changes are taking place within a faulty system.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“[W]hen the narrative of climbing makes others put profits before people, fitting cheap cladding into their tower blocks, what then? How many other potential artists with stories we want and need have we lost for the sake of financial profit; have we lost to thoughtless education systems, thoughtless nurturing, thoughtlessness? Why are we platforming misfits, heralding them as newly rich successes, while they balance on creaking ladders with little chance of social mobility? I can't help usher them into this house if there are doors within it they can't open. It feels complicit.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“It's good to talk, and engage with someone else, transparently. I believe in treating our minds like we treat cars at inspection--it's probably fine but check in, just in case.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I went to write in Zurich. [...] I'd accidentally traveled to the third most expensive city in the world. Another birthday passed out there. I got so hungry I went into a McDonald's and asked them for fries; they gave me fries. This is a real life story.

Somebody gave me something, for nothing in return. I wrote that episode in three days.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto

“I wrote about the resilience born from having no safety net at all, having to climb ladders with no stable ground beneath you.

On top of it, all our ladders were faulty, born climbing a ladder before we could walk, and better climb fast lest it snap beneath your feet! I told people to keep climbing, for the love of it, whatever the craft, not because of financial profit, or safety. What is "safety"? I wrote that such circumstances can leave you feeling destined for defeat, or it could do something else; it could breed a determination, a relentless pursuit of one's dreams that no safe man could ever replicate. I changed the narrative, twisting it in my favor.”
― Michaela Coel, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto