Quotes About Identity

I definitely feel I'm outside of the polished pop girl group, which feels right. I don't think I could keep up that polished surface on purpose.

The surface is all you get of me.

There's this misconception in the industry that you might have to go a little lighter or skate on the surface in order to reach people - and then in your second album, you get to tell who you are.

A lot of the stuff about white-supremacist groups was very family-friendly: 'We just love our people.' One the surface, you go, 'Gee, what's wrong with loving your people?' But when you love your people to the exclusion of everything else that's remotely different, that's when you get into trouble.

I feel like modeling can be a little surface.

I respect the police officers, but something you learn as a young black man in this country is that... life is a little bit different for you even though, on the surface, it seems to be the same.

This sense in which so much of who we are doesn't break the surface - our knowability to one another is always something I like to explore.

What we are, the experiences we've had, come to the surface.

We are true to our name. We're somewhat beneath the surface, and I think well always be to a certain extent.

I don't know whether, if your father is a brain surgeon, people go, 'He's not as good a brain surgeon as his father.' I don't know whether that happens, but because of who Ma is, a lot of people have an opinion, which they form before they get to know me or before they see what I can do.

I see myself at a certain age as not being able to play the kind of parts that would keep me stimulated, and I can't imagine my life ending professionally the moment that I've got to go to the plastic surgeon and have my face rearranged.

My father was this famous heart surgeon, a wonderful man... but there was something about me that drove him crazy.

In our culture, good looks are so important, and today he'd head straight for a plastic surgeon, but in Cyrano's time, the nose was who he was, and it didn't matter that he was a brilliant poet, a brilliant swordsman, a brilliant man. His nose defined him.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

I think I'm still trying to find my feet as an actor. And I know it ain't brain surgery, but it confuses me and it comes between me and my sleep a lot.

I'm not having plastic surgery.

If you choose to be Frankenstein with Botox and plastic surgery, you've bought your own private mask.

Let me put it this way: I don't plan to retire. What would I do, become a brain surgeon? I mean, a brain surgeon can retire and write novels, but a novelist can't retire and do brain surgery - or at least he better not.

One thing I think celebrities shy away from is exposing the reality that we're all the same. Somebody's not more important because they have a Bentley or a big house or a famous boyfriend or plastic surgery - we're all the same.

Today you see so many lady-boys in Bangkok roaming the streets where they have even removed their Adam's apple through surgery to look like girls. That's tampering with nature, but I feel if one needs to do little things to look good as we are in the looks business, then one shouldn't hesitate to do plastic surgery.

I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.

What I'm trying to achieve with my surgery is my own personal satisfaction. It's narcissism.

I went through this kind of existential crisis. I was going through a breakup; I tore my ACL and my meniscus and had to have surgery, so I was out of school for a few months. Then my computer crashed, which was, like, my whole life. So when I came out of it, I started making music that, I think, was the most true to me.

Being trans means different things to different people. Some people don't take hormones, some people don't have surgery, some people are just happy living in the clothes of their chosen gender.