Quotes About Self-expression

Life's too short to wear ugly clothes.

Sempre fomos o que os homens disseram que nós éramos. Agora somos nós que vamos dizer o que somos.

People can portray me anyway they want because I don't give a damn. I am what I am. And until those people touch me close enough, they'll never know who I am. If they don't want to see me in this interview or a newspaper article, and say "what's the matter with this guy?" Let'em say it. But don't you analyze me and don't you tell me what I am until you get close enough to understand what I am. Then you can make an analysis of me, but don't you dare do it until then.

My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.

Simply following the herd is not going to work. In a way that past generations simply didn't have to do, each one of us will need to think about who we are and how we construct our life and how this reflects our identity and values.

Cool isn't for sale at the bondage store. You make it up yourself, pull it outta your asshole, your own unique brand that starts when you're born, and when you die, it's gone.

You and me," she says, "we're two sides of the same coin. Gender's a box you turn inside out, tear up, and sew a gown out of." She says most people are bored and hateful because they can't fuck with the box. They think prison's protection. They take what they're served and think they like it, but deep down they want to be something else, and they'll kill anyone sewing gowns they're afraid to wear.

All I want to do is go on with the unbridled life I lead here: barefoot, my faded bathing suit, an old jacket, lots of garlic, and swimming at all hours of the day. —COLETTE, AT SIXTY

you couldn't stop a person from being who she was. All you could do was stop yourself from being with her.

Nothing could be calculated to make a shy girl less interesting than the command to be more interesting.

Serena Killingsworth walked toward them, carrying her cello in a brown case. Her short hair, currently colored Crayola-red, was twisted into bobby-pin curls. A nose ring glistened on the side of her nose. She wore purple lipstick, red-brown shadow around her green eyes, and a smile that seemed to hold a secret. She was new at school. Vanessa liked her look and especially admired the way she seemed so oblivious to what other people thought about her.

So why didn't I make the choices necessary to do that? Because nice girls just don't ask for help. They'd rather do almost anything than inconvenience other people. So they don't honor their own needs, desires, or dreams. Underneath, they really don't think it's okay to do that.

I know, I should've just shut him down like a Broadway Musical, but that's just not the way I'm wired.

tegeus-Cromis, sometime soldier and sophisticate, who now dwelt quite alone in a tower by the sea and imagined himself a better poet than swordsman.

He said the stadium was the only place you could express yourself openly. When a player scores, you can cheer, 'Hurray!' because you're happy, not because you're forced. You can't lie all the time!

They do as they please, they say what they think, and nobody cares, for everyone is busy doing likewise.

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men's clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

the development of a sense of self.

The beauty of a woman is first a soulful beauty. And yes, as we live it out, own it, inhabit our beauty, we do become more lovely. More alluring. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "Self flashes off frame and face." Our true self becomes reflected in our appearance. But it flows from the inside

The most essential gift you have to give is yourself.

When we begin to offer not merely our gifts but our true selves, that is when we become powerful.

Freedom is being allowed to think your own thoughts and live your own life.

I mean most women just want to be good at something, they've got good-at minds, and they mean deftness and a flair and good taste and what-not. They can't ever understand that if your desire is to go to the furthest limits of yourself then the actual form your art takes doesn't seem important to you. Whether you use words or paint or sounds.

Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form.