Quotes About Stigma

In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings.

At what point had I realized that class couldn't save you, that addiction or mental illness didn't care whether you'd taken piano lessons or spent a summer in Europe? Which drunk or junkie or unmedicated schizophrenic was I crossing the street to avoid when I put it all together?

Question: What's the difference between a whore and a bitch? Answer: A whore will sleep with anybody. A bitch will sleep with anybody… but you.

Like prisoners and shepherds, many of them didn't care who they had sex with, the idea being that what happens in the dark stays in the dark. It's the next morning you have to worry about—the name-calling, the slamming of doors, the charge that you somehow cast a spell.

in Japan, if you commit suicide by throwing yourself in front of a train, your family gets fined the equivalent of eighty thousand dollars for all the inconvenience you caused. Of course, if your family was the whole reason you were killing yourself, I suppose it would just be an added incentive.

I'm now told that this is not called 'going to sleep' but rather 'passing out,' a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgement.

Whenever we passed the place [Dix Hill, the local state mental hospital], my sisters and I would stick our heads out the car window, expecting to hear a hysterical voice cackling, "I'm mad, I tell you, MAD!" The patient would embrace his lunacy as though it were a treasure he had discovered hidden beneath the floor-boards. "Mad! mad!

Nosotros somos gente normal. Ésa era la absurda definición que mi padre hacía de nosotros. Luché contra ello, con el deseo callado de no ser normal, de ser alguien especial. Pero nunca pude sacudirme de encima ese estigma, el de ser normal.

It's okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise you're just crazy.

People aren't poor because they make bad choices. They make bad choices because they're poor.

Being in the beauty industry, since there wasn't many men in makeup it was weird and obviously at beauty events we would get weird looks. But over time it's been amazing seeing how accepting everyone is when it comes to boys wearing makeup.

I spent the first half of my career being accused of being gay when I hadn't had anything like a gay relationship.

I've got ADHD. I don't mind talking about that.

I was always treated older than I am when I was a kid, so I had to be like, 'No, I'm sweet,' and this has continued into adulthood because of the way society portrays Black women.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

I think we have a problem with how we treat people and alcohol.

As a child, I used 'gay' as a bad word, as in, 'That's so gay.' All my friends did.

No one wants to be the kid who allies with the weird kid.

Many people said that I shouldn't have worked alongside Noman Habib as it made me look much older.

What I get a bit angry about is the image of women.

I'm sure I'm one of those undiagnosed people with social anxiety.

I am done apologizing for being ambitious and I stand for all those women who don't want to apologize just because they are working.

Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white.

It's dangerous to write people off just because they've been arrested.