Quotes About Self-expression

I was brought up in a tradition of reading and thinking at university that, in a sense, left the body out. It was all about your mind. That good writing didn't have a "self" in it, didn't have an ego in it. Oh my God, I had so much to unlearn when I became a writer!

By not standing, I wanted to honor the founding principles of this country—the freedom of self-expression, liberty, and the equal opportunity to pursue happiness—and challenge us to try to reach those goals.

My problem was that I was blond. There were no heroes with blond hair. Robert Taylor and Henry Fonda, they all had dark hair. The only one I found was Van Johnson, who wasn't too cool. He was a nice, homely American boy. So I created my own image. It worked.

I do what I want. I'm punk rock.

Names are strange and special gifts. There are names you give to yourself and names you show to the world, names that stay for a short while and names that remain with you forever, names that come from things you do and names that you receive as presents from other people. If your name is true, it is who you are.

Wake up! Don't let them control you. Don't let them impose an identity on you. Don't obey them. Never submit to a prophet or a holy book. Think for yourself. Wear what you like. Eat what you like. Pray when you like. Don't you want to be free rather than a slave? Create your own identity. Create yourself. Because only those who do can become God. Nietzsche, an atheist, came far closer to the True God than any follower of any mainstream religion.

You cannot force change in others, you can only inspire change in others by being your awesomely self. The greatest service you can offer the world is to be your own authentic, weird and eccentric self.

I want to wake up every day and do whatever comes in my mind, and not feel pressure or obligations to do anything else in my life.

The only advice I have ever wanted to give is this: 'If it is in your nature to do so be a little vulnerable. Don't be afraid to talk about yourself, your journey, your pain, your vision.

I was a nerd in high school. Still am. That is why I had to write I KISSED A GHOUL ... because it is about a nerd in high school. It is my first Young Adult book too. Hope you enjoy it...

Everyone who enters the world comes in with hidden gold, it's called your natural gifts. The job of a person is to find the hidden gold and give it. It turns out that when you give it you get more than when you hold on to it, that's the economy of the soul.

At a wat temple in the mountains of Northern Thailand, a Buddhist teacher once reminded me of a simple truth. "Life," he said, "is offered as a means of self-expression, only giving us what we seek when we listen to the heart." The highest forms of this expression are acts of kindness.

Our greatest joy and our greatest spiritual responsibility is to become who we really are, which means, to fully express our spiritual archetype—our spiritual pattern, our spiritual identity. Esoteric psychologists (who are students and practitioners of the science of the soul) might well adopt one essential mantram which would be of supreme value to all their students and clients: Be Who You Are.

Autobiography is hopelessly inventive.

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.

I think I'm becoming more relaxed in front of a camera. I suppose I'll always feel slightly more at home on stage. It's more of an actor's medium. You are your own editor, nobody else is choosing what is being seen of you.

My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.

I mean, if I'm going to go to all the trouble of being gay and everything, I might as well tell people.

Straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls. Everyone just assumes that they do. But if you're gay, everybody makes this ginormous deal out of it. You practically have to hold a news conference and take out an ad in the newspaper. Why? Just because it's not what most people do? That doesn't seem fair.

Labeling we use to define a boy only obscures him. It is of no help to boys and no help to us, either.

That's what America's all about, man, if it's about anything. You can choose your own name.

I always felt different as a kid, and the Kinks were like, 'Yeah, we're the Kinks.' Celebrate your difference don't be afraid of your sense of humor, or your personality, or who you are. It emboldened me.

I quote others only in order to better express myself.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.