Quotes About Self-expression

Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself.

We make music for a living. Like I've always said, if you like what you're doing, you're halfway there; if someone else likes it, that's even better. If they don't like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.

I think, doing a first film, at some point you get halfway through, and you wonder, 'Is this is good enough to define who I am for the coming decade?'

I, being the ham that I am, always want people looking at me.

I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything - not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea.

The truth of the matter is, I am a black woman, and I am an actor. I don't try to get caught up in being a black actor; I'm just an actor who is a black woman. It's not about forgetting that you're black, but you don't need to be hammered over the head, either; it just is what it is.

I've always loved clothes, especially handbags and shoes. I'd rather save my money on clothing and wear crap, but have the handbags and shoes.

The most important thing is to be true to yourself, however you feel, and not try to feel or behave differently because you think you should, or someone has told you how you must feel. But do think about it. Unexamined feelings lead to all kinds of trouble.

Be a writer, if you will Or don't, no one will care Order your shelves, or not Kill or kiss your darlings Simply write

So I'll do that, and I'll do my best, and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.

He was what he was, and if he was wrong or had mental problems, that was still the way he was, the way he had to live.

And between them I am rosy cheeked, aflame with health and joy. I am still the owner of the same stupid Soviet polka-dot shirt, but most of it is hidden by a new Italian sweater, its shoulders ringed with something like epaulets, so that I may continue the fantasy that I will join the Red Army someday. My hair is as long and unruly as the Italian state, and the gap between my crooked teeth is its own opera, but the rings under my eyes that have made such an underaged raccoon out of me are gone.

The goal in life is not to attain some imaginary ideal; it is to find and fully use our own gifts.

There are things that a woman sings, and only a woman knows the full meaning. You may sing for men as well as for women, but only a woman knows your full meaning. I am not a feminista. I only think a woman should be true to who she believes herself to be. Or who she wants herself to be. Or who she imagines herself to be. I don't know what I mean, or whether I'm true myself to any of that. I don't think there are many of us who are true to our possibilities.

He was a rich man—richer, I think, than Mr. Macafee—and like most rich men he had nothing distinctive about him, the money having assumed for him the task of self-expression that, in poorer men, is assumed by the personality;

For a few minutes it didn't matter what anyone thought of me. I have created something that didn't exist the day before, from a place that didn't belong to anyone but me.

That is why Lawrence, like Rilke, hated photographs of himself. To both writers photographs prefigured an end of becoming.

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

I have always been sure that if England were ever occupied its people would find the organization of underground cells an almost effortless means of self-expression.

I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.

I try to follow his example, not to imitate him.

Hypatia:...I don't want to be good; and I don't want to be bad: I just don't want to be bothered about either good or bad: I want to be an active verb. Lord Summerhays: An active verb? Oh, I see.An active verb signifies to be, to do or to suffer. Hypatia: Just so; how clever of you! I want to be; I want to do; and I'm game to suffer if it costs that. But stick here doing nothing but being good and nice and ladylike I simply won't.

I don't say it was a bad one. But bad or good, I didn't choose to be cut to your measure. And I won't be cut to it.

La vida no consiste en buscarse a sí mismo, sino en crearse a sí mismo