Quotes About Self-expression

I do take advantage of, you know, feeling sensual and feeling sexy. And I think that is tremendously empowering and is not diminishing in any way. I fell that any woman who is in control, who is in touch with her femininity and sensuality, is a woman that is empowered.

I feel like every role you take, there's a part of you that obviously feels like you can do it. I don't know if perfect is the right word because I don't believe in perfection. I don't think it exists.

My first time in drag was at Pride. I'm a Pride queen. It was a disaster. The short answer is that you can do it, but you're going to create a drag faux-pas. Do not, I repeat, do not wear high heels to Pride. Don't do it. It's not worth it. Just don't do it to yourself, honey.

I don't think you should do something just to prove to an audience that you can do it, that's way out of your wheelhouse.

You have to be you. You can't be anybody else. If you speak loudly, and people tell you to speak quietly, you can do it for a little bit, but loud people are loud, and people who are not, are not.

What the Internet offers is this completely unfiltered transmission of thought to thought, of psyche to psyche, and whatever you're feeling, you can just sort of put it down and send it out there, and you can do it all in the confines of your room, without any actual contact.

I went to Westside School of Ballet in L.A. and I was climbing through the ranks. Then I got to pointe shoes and I was like, 'This is not cool, you guys. This is gonna be in textbooks, someday, along with Chinese foot-binding.' Anyway, it's not for me, so I got into doing different kinds of dance.

It wasn't cool that I didn't comb my hair and had books and wore glasses. It was never cool be a nerd and tomboy, and these days, it really is. And I'm like, 'You guys have no idea what I went through.' How many times my mother yelled at me to comb my hair.

Well, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I'm actually shy around people I don't know. I would just say with my first concert, my first tour, I didn't really talk onstage. I was like, 'Thank you, I love you guys,' or whatever. But now I've just kind of learned to work a crowd.

Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're 34.

As a young actor, people were trying to define who I was before I really knew that for myself. But I still remember thinking, 'This is what I love doing, and I hope I'm going to be able to do it forever.'

If I was to try putting makeup all over my face, it would look weird. People would be like, 'That's not Young M.A. That's not her style; that's not her soul.' I'd just rather be natural.

My goal the whole time has been for people to see me as a stand-alone artist. I came out with Young Money, the biggest hip-hop label in the world at the time. And then it was, 'How do I branch away from Lil Wayne?'

I'm still so young, so I feel like people have wanted to keep me in a 'no-makeup' fresh type of look - sometimes artists are a little afraid of really putting the makeup on me.

I have only really gotten by with playing versions of myself as most young actors do.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of 'Who do you think you are?'

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.

From a young age, I wanted to differentiate myself from my older siblings.

I learned at a young age that my voice was not wanted or heard, so I went silent. I did what I was told and set goals based on what everyone else expected of me.

People define themselves aesthetically at a very young age.

I feel like one thing that a lot of creative people go through is that they feel like they don't have the right to be creative or to put their stuff out there. I'm glad that blogging from a young age kind of got that out of the way for me.

I am a fifth-generation American, but from a young age, I went to yeshiva. I spent 12 hours a day with rabbis, and I think in Yiddish. To this day, I have to go back and unravel my writing and polish it so everyone doesn't sound like an old Jewish woman.

I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb. I came to the conclusion - I had to at such a young age - if no one was going to be like me, then I just have to own it. If I can't be like everyone else, then I might as well just own who I am.

I never counted how many tattoos I have, but I started getting them at a really young age, so most of my big ones are cover-ups.