Quotes About Self-expression

I was a terribly quiet, shy child. The comedy thing came when I was at university and I started doing stand-up, which I think was a belated compensation for all that time I spent hiding behind the couch.

I wasn't the class nerd, but I was weird. I could tell long stories and be funny, but I couldn't do sports. And I was always terrified of being held back.

The gay people I knew in real life were soft spoken and didn't want to call attention to themselves because they were terrified of exposing themselves, of people finding out that they're gay.

There's an audience that is paid to laugh at my jokes. I'm playing a character while I'm doing stand-up. Real stand-ups, man, they're playing themselves. I'd be far too terrified.

Being alone on stage without a character to hide behind has always terrified me but I've always been one for facing my fears.

Art is all about giving yourself these terrifying challenges, these peaks to climb. You're at the bottom of the mountain at the start of every new project thinking, 'Am I going to make it?'

Hopefully I inspire people just to lose themselves a little bit. That's what I enjoy doing on stage: challenging myself with a new territory, like performing differently, moving differently, singing differently, just let people know that it's okay just to do something that they've never done before.

I had big problems with stage fright in the past. I think, slowly, as I've gotten better at it, I've started to enjoy it. It's made me a more confident person in my normal life. I can open up and be myself in situations that used to be abject terror.

I'm the Terry Bradshaw of drag. Not Carrie Bradshaw. Terry!

Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human.

It took me at least all my 20s and some of my 30s to get the confidence to realise I could just write about what I wanted to write about without having to pass a test or look super clever.

I'm honestly not the kind of person who wants to step up to a podium, test the microphone and be like, 'Hey, I'm homosexual and this is who I am, hear me roar.' That's not who I am.

When I wrote 'Kidulthood,' I didn't even know there was going to be a 'Kidulthood.' I just wanted to test myself to see if I could write a script.

I think I am less self-assured when I write English than I would be if I were writing in my first language. I have to test each sentence over and over to be sure that it's right, that I haven't introduced some element that isn't English.

It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years.

For me, acting is becoming naked in front of people, you know? And when you know in the back of your mind somebody is testing you, you cannot really bare yourself. That's a feeling I always have when I'm auditioning.

In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and part of my whole exhibitionist thing has probably been a way of testing to see whether or not I really was this repulsive creature that I felt like for so long.

I think the reason I was 23 before I ever wrote a song was that I was afraid of testing myself. What would I do if I discovered I didn't have anything to say?

Every person has the inherent right to "self-proclaim"--to announce, at any time he chooses, that he is on any level he chooses to be on.

When you have a project, do it exactly as you see fit; then fit the facts around the event, not the other way around.

Now I was going to be myself. I wasn't going to be hard to get along with or go out of my way to say anything mean, but from now on people were going to have to take me for what I was.

I would wish it on no one to be me. Only I am capable of being myself. To know so much, to have seen so much, and To say nothing, just about nothing.

No mire lo que hagan los demás. No se le importe un pepino de lo que opine el prójimo. Sea usted, usted mismo sobre todas las cosas, sobre el bien y el mal, sobre el placer y sobre el dolor, sobre la vida y la muerte. Usted y usted. Nada más. Y será fuerte como un demonio entonces.

This is my last communique from the planet of the monsters. Never again will I immerse myself in literature's bottomless cesspools. I will go back to writing my poems, such as they are, find a job to keep body and soul together, and make no attempt to be published.