"We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in"

This quote by Pamela Hansford Johnson talks to the concept that we should accept people for who they are, even if they don't fit into our presumptions of them. Johnson is suggesting that we must not try to force individuals to comply with our expectations, however rather accept them for who they are, even if that implies accepting the parts of them that we might discover repulsive. Johnson is stressing the significance of accepting individuals for their true selves, instead of attempting to change them to fit our own perfects. She is recommending that it is much better to accept the real portrait of somebody, even if it is not what we expected, than to attempt to include information that don't fit. Johnson is advocating for acceptance and understanding of people, despite how different they may be from our own expectations.