"I try to be the fixer of situations and I gravitate to people who are institutional misfits"
About this Quote
Pair that with “institutional misfits” and the subtext sharpens. Jenkins isn’t just drawn to quirky individuals; he’s drawn to people who don’t fit the systems that are supposed to hold them - schools, jobs, scenes, even the music industry itself. That’s a romantic posture in rock culture, where being out of step gets recast as authenticity. But it also signals a dynamic: misfits create friction, fixers create dependency. The fixer becomes translator, negotiator, sometimes savior, sometimes enabler.
Contextually, it reads like a mission statement for a certain late-’90s alternative ethos: polished enough for radio, restless enough to insist it’s not “mainstream.” Jenkins has long lived in that tension - crafting hooks while courting outsider credibility. This quote works because it admits the paradox without resolving it: he’s attracted to people who resist institutions, even as he positions himself as the one who can make them functional inside (or despite) those systems.
Quote Details
| Topic | Friendship |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: The Gift of Adversity (Norman E Rosenthal MD, 2013) modern compilationISBN: 9781101613054 · ID: uBuMMfxKMewC
Evidence:
... I try to be the fixer of situations and I gravitate to people who are institutional misfits. —STEPHAN JENKINS. If. Everybody you were in crisis, my father was a great go-to person. seemed to know that instinctively, if not by his ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Jenkins, Stephan. (2026, April 1). I try to be the fixer of situations and I gravitate to people who are institutional misfits. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-try-to-be-the-fixer-of-situations-and-i-72386/
Chicago Style
Jenkins, Stephan. "I try to be the fixer of situations and I gravitate to people who are institutional misfits." FixQuotes. April 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-try-to-be-the-fixer-of-situations-and-i-72386/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I try to be the fixer of situations and I gravitate to people who are institutional misfits." FixQuotes, 1 Apr. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-try-to-be-the-fixer-of-situations-and-i-72386/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2026.







