Disagreeing

Been thinking about opinions, about disagreeing, about how somewhere along the line I grew frightened of having a strong opinion for fear someone would disagree with me and then I'd feel bad.  My father (and others) will be shocked to hear me say this, as in some ways I seem to have an endless supply of strong opinions, but this fear is also true about me.  I still want the right answer, the A++; I want for everyone in the whole world to think I'm pretty and smart and cool.  I wanna be the good kid. 

Anyway, was talking to Sam about it yesterday, and today he sent me this quote by Tolstoy on how tedious he finds Shakespeare as an example of brave disagreeing.   Love it, not because I agree, but because he just says it, you know?  The whole world loves Shakespeare and Tolstoy says: meh.  Although, I'm no Tolstoy.  Can we only express opinions this bold when we're Tolstoy? 
 
"I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear", "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth."

Tolstoy on Shakespeare. 1906.