Quotes About Self-discovery

There were a lot of points where I would start to come out, face stern resistance and mockery from people I thought were my friends, and then reverse course. I was scared. I don't think I ever said, 'I'm gay,' or, 'I'm trans.' It was more like, 'Is it normal for guys to crossdress a lot?'

My journey is about believing that people will actually stick around. It's a hard thing to believe when you don't have a prototype for it. I've had to develop that for myself.

I've had probably way too many acting classes, and you try to sort of shed - I think over a period of time, you'll shed what doesn't stick with you, and you'll hang onto those things that do.

Raised Roman Catholic up until 11 or 12, didn't stick. Went out into the world and did my own thing.

Everybody gets through a phase where it's, 'Ah, if I could just sound just like Vince Gill.' Then you figure out that you have your own voice, whether you like it or not, and that's what you should stick with.

The searching for our selves is the most agonizing, isn't it? - and yet the most stimulating - and one simply cannot escape it.

When I came to Bengaluru, I had just joined college and there was a sting in me to be independent and find my own self. And I feel like I have done that through art and theatre here.

We don't do things we aren't good at by nature. I wouldn't play basketball because I'm only 5' 1". Find what you enjoy - whether it's racing, flying a helicopter, being a doctor, or stitching clothes together. Once you've done that, you have the passion you need.

I'm from a rural town outside of Stockholm, so in coming to L.A., I've been able to not think that much about my background. It's much easier for me in this big town, this big bubble to isolate myself from that and be a little more self-confident. I'm here to do my take on soul.

At the start of the band's career, I had ideas for songs and thoughts I figured out, but at the time I wasn't sure how to write music or to finish a song. So for me to have finished a whole album on my own is a huge feat. That would be impressive to 15-year-old me. I think he'd be stoked.

It's really good to be able to think about past loves without having a pit in my stomach, or cringing or feeling heart-broken, or like they hate you. Don't you think?

My second or third year in the engineering department, I got very frustrated, and I sat down with myself and had a soul-searching conversation with myself and said, 'What I'd really like to do is see if I can write comedy.' ... I moved to L.A. stone cold. Didn't know anybody; didn't know how to go about it. Really started from scratch.

That's what prison did for me, it isolated me, you know, it polished me up like a stone.

I wasn't rapping and freestyling in high school. I wasn't telling people I was gonna be a rapper when I was a little kid. It wasn't set in stone that it was my dream.

When I began to listen to poetry, it's when I began to listen to the stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And I think, most importantly for all of us, then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else.

I've always stood for one thing, and that is having freedom, and part of that is the freedom to unapologetically be yourself.

I was playing this character, Melchior Gabor, who was a rebel and who was a person who didn't let the world define him, and who stood up to authority and was this kind of revolutionary... And when I left 'Spring Awakening,' I came out of that experience feeling like... I had cultivated this side of my personality that hadn't existed before.

I stood there amazed. I found it all hard to believe, that I, Des Nilsen, had actually done all that.

I was 10 when I realised I couldn't stand football. I'd tried, obviously, before this - no one wants to give in to social pariah-hood without a fight. I had stood frozen on pitches, done some running about and shouted a lot, as though I cared.

I grew up basically in a predominantly, you know, white community and I was mixed but as a kid you don't know that. So I was always different, always stood out and people would always make fun of me.

When I stopped seeing my mother through the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.

I didn't know how to socialize. I wasn't able to date. I felt like I was missing out on life. When I stopped diving, I started living.

And when I stopped doing that and started thinking about what feels natural and what feels right to me and started pleasing myself, then it became good.

I could always escape into this demi-monde of homosexuality, which I feel really indebted to. It stopped me being a 'mummy's boy.'