To be nobody-but-myself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
Source: Letter to a high school editor, 1955; in Selected Letters, ed. by F. W. Dupree and George Stade.
-- e e cummings, (Oct 14 1894-1962), US poet, novelist; He is well known for his eccentric language and typography; wrote Tulips are Chimneys, 1923 and the autobiographical The Enormous Room, 1922.