Quotes About Self-discovery

We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn.

I was always singing to myself, but I never ever performed, and I never told anyone I liked to sing. So it was a definitely a new adventure going in to audition for 'Glee.'

I love my stuff - you're not supposed to say that. But because I'm performer as well as a writer, I'm constantly interacting with my own work. I always get to find these little secrets that I left for myself, little notes - I find them all over the scores.

I needed the time to go to college and spend years with people who aren't in the business and become a person on my own in order to be the person that I am and the performer that I am. I wouldn't give that up to be in blockbusters or have more money.

I think the actual art of expressing yourself is a very important part of being human. And an important part of being a performer is understanding what it's like to create yourself.

It wasn't so much figuring out my voice comedically, because that was always pretty clear. It was more about performing and being a good, watchable performer.

My experience started in the gay nightlife/drag life. I was just as consumed in ignorance about what is offensive to transpeople because at that time I hadn't found myself. I was living as a drag performer only.

When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to... I finally feel like myself.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

I moved to New York and went to a performing arts college, but it wasn't until UCB that I started performing on the regular, figuring out how I'm funny, why I'm funny, and how to play with an audience.

I always felt like a girl. My parents in New Jersey weren't exactly encouraging, but my grandmother was very open-minded. She had lots of costume jewelry and a big chest of purses and things, and she would let me play with all of it - even her makeup and perfume. She just didn't care.

I've just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist.

Every human being goes through a period of time in their life where they feel like they've lost who they are, and they're trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

By the time I enrolled in the military at 20, I had spent years in denial about who I really was. I was openly gay and would go through periods of cross-dressing, and had even thought about transitioning, but I was in such complete denial.

I thought perhaps if I tried something that was so masculine perhaps that's what I would become. Sadly, that wasn't the case... sad in the sense that maybe it would have made some of the darker periods in my life a bit more manageable.

Confidence comes in going on personal journeys in a public arena and feeling as though you have a right to do that. You have to give yourself permission to discover what you need to discover and not worry about how pretty the journey is. If you're aware of the pretty, you're not going to dig into the mess.

I do wish I could have given myself permission to really name and own the me of me earlier in life.

My father didn't want me to go to New York City, and I was determined to go. Learning to give myself the permission to be who I was in the world and to make my own choices was hard.

I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.

I've spent most of my life trying to wear a persona that didn't quite fit and when I started writing books, it was like finally becoming the right person.

As you mature and gain a semblance of wisdom and a sense of what life is all about... this is by no means true of everyone, but a lot of actors like to escape themselves. Inhabiting another person's persona is often a good way of escaping yourself.

When I first started, I had a mullet, and I was trying to play a hillbilly persona. While it was fun, it wasn't me.

Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.

Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.