Quotes About Identity

For writers from working-class families, the making of art is cultural disenfranchisement, for we do not belong in literary circles and our writing rarely makes it back home.

What thoughts are to the individual, art is to the community as a whole. That's where you reflect on who you are, who you hope to be, what you've gone through, and where you hope to go.

I never thought, "I'm going to be an artist". When I actually began to become successful in the art world I made it a point to say, 'I am a dilettante, I am not a professional artist", which is true.

Most of the more celebrated names among African-American authors, poets, and artists are known to the world because of their association with specific cultural arts movements.

Art needs to stand for something.

I hear you're losing weight again, Mary Jane. Do you ever wonder who you're losing it for?

I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.

I like to dress up but I'm not so concerned with looking very sexy, it's really more the art of dressing.

Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western.

I'm very much half-American - my mom is American. I grew up in Australia until I was 16 then I finished high school over here because I got into this performing arts high school.

Everybody's wearing a disguise, to hide what they've got left behind their eyes.

Fortune or fame, you must pick one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim.

Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed, dignity never been photographed.

In this age of fiberglass, I'm searching for a gem.

Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human.

When I was 10, I knew there was something different about me. Everyone was football-mad, but I just wanted to watch musicals and see art.

You are the artist and the art.

I've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.

If you're making art, you are not separate from your brand.

To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question.

Illusion I will be, for I've never been a sinner.

We were all imitative. We all wandered in after Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay. We were all being dashing and gallant, declaring we weren't virgins, whether we were or not.

Music is reflection of self.