Quotes About Identity

There is just a lot of creativity and theatricality in performers who happen to be gay. Maybe there's a success in numbers, so by the law of averages we are going to get these jobs.

Performers like to perform, and there's certainly no disgrace in entertaining people, in giving pleasure, you hope, through your singing. My work defines who I am.

Truly great performers reveal not only their characters but bring everything they know about the world with them. It's not just what's in the script but the story of everything you've done and of who you are. If you're Chaplin, you're the immigrant. No matter what he's doing, he's always the little guy trying to make his place in the world.

What I love so much about drag is that it has politics at its very core; drag performers aren't afraid to talk about politics in our community and the changes we need to see systemically in society.

I learned a lot from Elvis. He never took his image seriously. So many performers today put their image before themselves. It can ruin them. Like Elvis, I never took my image seriously.

When we came up, groups and bands and performers were interested in being their own thing. They wanted to make sure that they had their own identity.

If you're performing music that is not who you are or where you're at, it is painful. It's painful for the performer and for the audience.

I'm not very good at being a performing monkey.

I'm not one of these guys who is dedicated to playing or performing - that's just one facet of my life.

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

Performing has always been instinctive to me. I remember people saying, 'he doesn't know if he's a chef or an entertainer.' But what's wrong with being both? It's like saying you can't run the 100 and the 200 metres.

The next time a former child star is in the news, look at the age at which he or she started performing. Then imagine making a life-changing decision at that age. Chances are good he or she wasn't the one who made it.

I think theatricality is just one way of performing. I don't think it's a better way or the way, but it's my way.

I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.

This is my religion. I take long breaks now when I don't perform and I am not myself when I am not performing.

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.

When people think of performing they usually think of show-offs, but I think of it more that you disappear into somebody else.

I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn't perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18.

When you spend your entire life as a child actress, being told where to go and where to stand, you're performing constantly for people. It definitely breeds the kind of person who's dependent on other people's approval.

Maybe I just wasn't a show-biz type. I didn't miss performing at all.

When you start performing, you realize that you have to separate yourself from the pack. So I would never wear bell-bottoms, which everybody else was wearing. I had short hair - and to see a 21-year-old guy walk onstage without longish hair was, in itself, weird. Every entertainer needs a shtick.

I'm not going to play gigs as Jamie xx. I'm just going to DJ. I'm not comfortable performing my songs on a stage. It's not something I think I'm particularly good at.

For a lot of actors, there's a sort of code of honor around playing something other than yourself, which I just don't have. I love feeling like I'm - I won't even say acting out, but performing in some deep seam of my consciousness or my family's consciousness or my past. That's really amusing to me.

We're all performing for someone.