Quotes About Self-expression

I feel like basketball is my outlet. Basketball is an opportunity for me to get all my emotions out.

You don't need mainstream media outlets, the big TV looks, or the magazine covers.

I just couldn't keep on trying to please people. It was hindering my creative output, and I had to be honest with myself.

When you make giant things for people, they don't always fit; they're not always happy with something that's that big or that kind of outrageous compared to what they usually wear.

I don't like looking outrageous.

I went for an outrageous form of expressing myself. It seemed to be a way that I could make my name and show that I was somebody.

I became the master of playing the straight bat - I would go to bars with the boys, I would always be the one to start a fight, to be outrageous and drink the most. I even went to the extreme of marrying the perfect woman for me.

At the outset, I think that one should be natural, not just when it comes to writing but in every area of life. If you try to be something that you are not just to impress others, then it's a rather sad life.

Authenticity means erasing the gap between what you firmly believe inside and what you reveal to the outside world.

I always did my own thing. I'm not an outsider, but I have one foot in and one foot out.

Everybody think they're an outsider - that word's over! When I was young, being an outsider, I thought it was a bad thing you didn't want to be.

I am who I am, and I can't change that. It's not something I've labored over.

I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.

Believe it or not, I loved my Jheri curl and thought it was beautiful on me. It actually made my hair grow like crazy. What they didn't tell you back then was that once you get the Jheri curl, there's no way of getting rid of it, so when I was over it, I ended up having to cut off all my hair and start all over again.

Overall, I just love performing so much that when I write, I want to write for me. I kind of learned that on 'Mr. Show,' that even in an environment where you can write whatever you want - which is what that environment was - I realized, 'Man, I still want to be the guy out in front.'

I had to overcome the name Rock. If I'd been as hip then as I am now, I would have never consented to be named Rock.

I just wanted to be who I was, which was like so many other girls I knew. We grew up in the city, had a hard edge and obstacles to overcome, but we were still young and beautiful. I didn't want to be all dressed up, all made up - I wanted to be myself, which hadn't been done before.

When I first was putting out music, I was like, 'I don't want to be overly sexy or do too much with the imaging or show too much skin, and I want to make sure my lyrics are balanced.'

Fashion is quite inclusive and good at embracing different things and different forms of beauty. It's a very liberal industry. You can be yourself. Just not overweight.

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people.

Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.

A place where they could be people they never dreamed they'd be.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

There's nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else's. That's a difficult statement to live up to, but then I've always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.