Quotes About Self-expression

For me performing has a lot to do with being fearless. I wrote an article for Artforum in the mideighties that had a line in it that the rock critic Greil Marcus quoted a lot: "People pay money to see others believe in themselves." Meaning, the higher the chance you can fall down in public, the more value the culture places on what you do. Unlike, say, a writer or a painter, when you're onstage you can't hide from other people, or from yourself either.

Back then, and even now, I wonder: Am I "empowered"? If you have to hide your hypersensitivity, are you really a "strong woman"? Sometimes another voice enters my head, shooing these thoughts aside. This one tells me that the only really good performance is one where you make yourself vulnerable while pushing beyond your familiar comfort zone. I liken it to having an intense, hyper-real dream, where you step off a cliff but don't fall to your death.

The girl anchors the stage, sucks in the male gaze, and, depending on who she is, throws her own gaze back out into the audience.

Back then, and even now, I wonder: Am I "empowered"? If you have to hide your hypersensitivity, are you really a "strong woman"? Sometimes another voice enters my head, shooing these thoughts aside. This one tells me that the only really good performance is one where you make yourself vulnerable while pushing beyond your familiar comfort zone. I liken it to having an intense, hyper-real dream, where you step off a cliff but don't fall to your death. Though

If I look at the message I'm portraying, I think it definitely is be who you are, but be your best you.

Pete, it doesn't matter how you move as long as you are being you.

If you want to be cool, just be you.

I've been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first fifteen years didn't produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems--very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That's a point in one's favor.

Anyway you looked at it, I had little choice but to bray along with the others. It was too late now. I had let my diffidence and dislike for exhibitionism get the better of me.

I'm not out here to win a beauty contest.

Don't know about you, but I like taking up more space.

I'm an adult and this is my house. I can grow what I like in my garden. Wear what I choose. What difference does it make what you or anyone else thinks of as normal? Why the f should I care if you approve?

Fucking witch. You say that as if it's an insult,

I am gay, and that's a good thing.

Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.

Me? I'm just a literary girl gone wrong. Slow with the tongue. Quick with the pen. Undeniably cute. But, on the whole, ill-equipped for the privilege of living.

I am aware that somewhere along the line, I've subconsciously turned down the pitch of my speech, like a silencer of a gun that softens the sound of its firing. Now, even when I yell, I don't feel like I am using my full voice.

Try a bikini next time." "Right. I'll also try setting myself on fire, since it would be just as fun.

What some people don't understand about new clothes is it's not about the clothes. It's the promise of how happy you'll be when you wear them, the wonderful things you'll be doing in them, how people will look at you and say, yes, there's a woman who really likes herself.

Einstein told me I was smart. Maybe I'd get a tattoo of those words.

People are, well, people, and they all have their own quirks and will do whatever they want to no matter what you would like them to do.

I don't care if you wear a muu muu or a tutu, you'll still be beautiful." "That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me," I joked with him. "And you get extra points for making it rhyme.

I think people are used to seeing actors be wide open and desperately giving of themselves, and while I do that on a movie set as much as I can, it's so unnatural for me to do it on television, in interviews, in anything like that. I also don't find that my process as an actor is really anyone else's business.

I think I'm a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It's not about being shameful, I'm just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear.