The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us. Artistic revolt, innovation, experiment should not be met with hostility. They may disturb an established order or an artificial conventionality, but they may rescue us from death in life, from robot life, from boredom, from loss of the self, from enslavement.
When we totally accept a pattern not made by us, not truly our own, we wither and die. People’s conventional structure is often a facade. Under the most rigid conventionality there is often an individual, a human being with original thoughts or inventive fantasy, which does not dare expose for fear of ridicule, and this is what the writer and artist are willing to so for us. They are guides and map makers to greater sincerity. They are useful, in fact indispensable, to the community. They keep before our eyes the variations which make human beings so interesting. The men who built America were the genuine physical adventurers in a physical world. This world once built, we need adventurers in the realm of art and science. If we suppress the adventure of the spirit, we will have the anarchist and the rebel, who will burst out from too narrow confines in the form of violence and crime.

This was written by Anais Nin in 1949.  If you have never read any of her writing—please check her out.  She is mostly known for her journals that she started keeping at the young age of fourteen.