Quotes About Self-expression

I think I've committed the one really bad English crime, which is I've risen above my station. I was supposed to be a pop star, and suddenly I'm claiming that I'm an artist of some kind.

I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I never took music lessons. I was just playing around in front of the mirror and being silly, then suddenly I started making songs.

After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!

Fashion has always been a source of stress for me because I don't know how to dress myself. I'm short-torsoed with big boobs, and I don't really understand what a belt does. But you get on these shows, and people fit the clothing to you, and suddenly you learn, 'Oh, I should be wearing petite jackets.'

My name, my real name, is Tracy. I always thought I was like a boy named Sue. So I made my friends call me 'Tray.'

When I was 16, it was 1988, and my style was a mess. Fur-lined brown suede jacket, paisley shirt, chinos, and Doc Martens. My hair was blow dried into a large quiff. That might sound vaguely cool. It wasn't.

Once, I tried to channel my inner Pocahontas and wore a lot of Navajo prints, a lot of beige, fringe, and suede... I wish I hadn't done that.

I can only be myself, and if I have to suffer for that, that's okay, because to pretend to be somebody else - I tried that, it's terrible.

I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition - and I have never suffered from it.

I suffered a lot from social anxiety, and being on set was really scary to me. That fear can cause limits in your art and your performance because you're not going all in because there is this little thing in your head.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

However, I don't by any means suggest that I'm always playing myself.

Sherlock' changed the perception of me. I have these cheekbones and this face that suggest very middle-class or period-drama roles. I want to show everyone there's much more to me than Irene Adler.

It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.

You've got to make sure that you don't have an airbrushed picture making you look like a 15-year-old cherub when your lyrics suggest otherwise.

The ladette thing, it's all a bit weird. I never really liked the word as it suggested we wanted to be men. We didn't.

I absolutely don't write for women - far, far from it. It's so not what I want to do. Some of the writers, who have helped out at the beginning and end of the process - they're all men - have suggested quite feminine subjects they want me to explore. And I'm always, simply, 'No.' I don't want to do diets, don't want to. I just can't do it.

I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy.

I don't want to look like Daisy Duke every day. I don't want to wear a bathing suit every day.

I've been acting since I was 5, literally since I could walk, and I've always said, 'I think one day I have to be in a fat suit.'

I look really good in a scuba suit.

Whenever I can put a fresh, clean suit on, I'm like a peacock. That's my most confident moment.

I don't act. I am the way I am, and choose roles that I think suit my body language.

The feathers have been retired to the London Hard Rock Cafe. I don't obsess about it as much. Also, it's strange - the better physical shape I get in, the less I care about what suit I'm covering myself up in. I'm not really out to flaunt it, but I'm just more comfortable in my own skin.