Quotes About Self-expression

I accept all of the music that I wrote.

We wrote 'Stellify' for Rihanna, but as we got to the end of writing it, I thought, 'You know what? I'm gonna keep this for myself. We'll give her another one.' She'd have probably sung it better, but it is too good for me not to do it.

I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.

I think on my passport form I described myself as 'entertainer,' filling it in, in a Post Office or something. I felt like I should be doing jazz hands when I wrote that, but I don't do anything else really.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny. And wonderful.

I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing.

The only joy I had was writing what was. That book was. It no longer amuses me to be all the things I was when I wrote that. But it is my story as I was then.

I like the guys who wrote their own stuff and were able to perform it, like Seth Rogen. He popped off so young. When he did 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin,' and he was a co-producer on the movie, I was like, 'Oh my God: that's exactly what I want to do.'

I never saw myself as a spokesman for a generation. It was all a bit heavy for me. I saw myself as a songwriter and wrote for myself, which I still do, and I also wanted to communicate with my audience.

I'm a big fan of Woody Allen. I used to love the fact that he wrote his own screenplay and acted in the movie.

My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn't write another black character until I was 18.

I wrote my own anthem: it's called 'Mariah's Theme.' It's on the 'Rainbow' album from '99. Back in the day.

I loved the last album, and it was one hundred percent me. But this is like me two years later, who understands a little bit more about music and understands a little bit more about making an album. I wrote a lot more.

I guess if I wrote a book one day, it would be about hair.

So I wrote what I hoped would be science fiction, I was not at all sure if what I wrote would be acceptable even. But I don't say that I consciously wrote with humour. Humour is a part of you that comes out.

I love wrestling, and I think there was something in me that needed to come out, and I was very fortunate to allow it to come out in the WWE and make a living doing that, and I enjoyed every second of that.

My biggest concern with the whole deal with 'Total Divas' and with WWE - and, you know, they want you to be engaged with social media and all this kind of stuff - I don't want to live my life to entertain other people.

WWE, I'm just full-on Paige, my in-ring character. 'Total Divas' is where I can completely be myself and be my lunatic, weird person.

I was really confident when I left WWE. I was confident that I would have a good time, and I was confident that I could wrestle differently than perhaps people saw me in the last few years with WWE, but I definitely wasn't prepared for this level of everything.

As a writer for six years, I wrote my own TV, which, I was the only person in the WWE that could probably honestly say, since day one in NXT, they wrote their own material.

I was that 16-year-old who loved WWE, and I wanted to be a pro wrestler, but I didn't understand why I had to be the bad guy. I wanted to be like Jeff Hardy - I wanted to be like Rey Mysterio - but I was told I had to be the guy who screamed terrible things about America and attack people from behind.

I'm not a 'Yes Man,' and I've always preferred to go back and forth and find something we both agree on so I can do it to the best of my ability. That was taken in WWE as trying to do what was best for me. In reality, I was trying to be different.

For me, because of WWE programming, it's easier for me to slip into someone that I'm not or someone that I always wanted to be and just haven't had the guts to. So this super, horrible mean person, I personally don't think it's who I am outside of the ring, but maybe it's someone I have always wanted to be and I just snapped.

So many queer people come out constantly for the rest of their lives, ya know? To the people they work with, to people in taxi cabs. Whatever it is, it isn't the one day.