Quotes About Self-expression

When the women's movement started in the 1960s, there was a vision of a future where women didn't wear makeup or worry about how their hair looked, and everybody wore sensible, comfortable clothes. It ran into an absolute brick wall.

I understand how hard it is to force yourself to be someone different. By the end of high school, I had taken to doing my math homework up against a concealed wall during lunch because I was tired of socializing.

On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession.

When I think of high school, stills are so important: it's all about the wallet with the kids - they define themselves with pictures, who they know, whose pictures they have. Yearbook pictures.

From when I was a really small girl on, I would pick every fabric, every color on the walls, and I was always redecorating. Like once every couple of months I would redecorate my room. I had a full wall that was all collage - the entire wall - when I was in junior high. And then it would kind of morph with me as I was growing.

I think I've been incredibly raw my whole career. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to look cool and spend time being guarded and putting up walls. I just never had the time. It seems more honest to say, 'Hey, this is who I am.'

I have to strip away all the layers when I'm writing the song. I have to cut through all these layers of years of putting up walls and putting protective layers around myself.

Basically, I think some of the weight helped take some of the walls down in reality, so basically I got a little more confident. I'm definitely not super confident, but I am confident that I don't have to hide behind those layers of fat and that I can actually open up to people a little more.

I want to inspire people to tear down their walls, especially for teenage girls.

I'm getting a bunch more face tattoos, because it doesn't look like I'm ever going to have to apply to a Walmart or Best Buy.

Attack your lashes with the wand. I think there's nothing wrong with doing that.

If I had my way, I wouldn't be sharing my personal life online. I'm a private person. At home, I don't wander around shirtless, flexing my muscles. I roam around unshaven, with my hair disheveled. Unfortunately, people perceive you differently. It's okay; they're free to speculate.

I wanna hear myself everywhere.

People always ask me who my role models are and who I want to be like, and I don't wanna be like anybody; I wanna be me. I look up to a lot of people, and they have had great influences on me, but I wanna be original and different.

I finally feel like I have enough of the tools to be able to really set the tone for myself with the kind of work I wanna do and the kind of process I wanna have.

There's nothing I have to hide or defend. I'm gonna live my life. And there are times when people wanna try to attack me, and I don't know why, but they will. And that's okay.

To see someone 70 years old with dyed black hair, you're like, 'Hmmm, I dunno. Is that a wrinkled teenager? What is that?' So at some point, I'm going to have to stop doing this. It's gonna look ridiculous. I don't wanna look like Elvis Presley at 60 years old.

I honestly don't have like a person that I wanna work with. I'm just always focused on me, and I'm still trying to figure out my sound and what I wanna do. So I'm never really looking for features or something.

I keep my hair curly and natural because I really just wanna show who I am.

You can do anything and be a star. You can dress like however you want, and you can do whatever you want. If you wanna wear meat suits like Lady Gaga, good. She's freaking amazing! She's doing that, and she's unbelievable. I can wear T-shirts and still be great, too. So that's just what I'm proving to people.

I'm not a camp, throwaway queen; I'm not in Neverland. I'm not Jennifer Lopez with three people to pluck my eyebrows. I've made myself what I want to be - not everybody's cup of tea. And people wanna have a look at me. I fully accept that. People have always wanted to have a look at me.

I'm my own stylist. Always! I don't wanna hire someone to chose what I should wear. At the same time, I do always wanna wear some crazy clothes.

When you used to be able to express yourself as an adult in your own language, or as I can do in English, for instance, it's sometimes hard to switch back to very simple talking, like I am forced to do in Finnish. So a real conversation, when I really wanna tell something, I can't do it in Finnish.

Adapt to yourself, bro. What I wanna say is don't let nobody tell you that you should stay in your lane, bro.