Quotes About Identity

I think I enjoy playing human beings no matter the substance of their character.

I knew that this was what I wanted to talk about on stage. There was no point being coy about it, or pretending that I wasn't gay. That was the substance of my whole act. If you took that away, there would be nothing left.

People think of me as a mannequin, all show and no substance.

I'd hate it to become style over substance, I'd hate people to start putting me in a magazine article about my style. I don't like dressing up in something I'm not necessarily comfortable in just to make it more of a show. I want the power to come from what I sing about and how I sing.

No one can deny who you are unless you are, in some way, minimizing the power and the force of your divine substance.

My faith - as well as my Nigerian culture - really gave me the substance and foundation to be who I desire to be in life.

People tend to call me for only one thing - NRI-based roles. I'd like to change that and expand a little bit, and have more substance.

I am not a hereditary politician and do not have any substantial asset.

There's a lot of music out there that's like, 'I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black,' and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th Century.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.

Acting is a bit of a substitute for life.

Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I'm like, 'Oh, that's me.'

I could have easily carved out a niche, but I realised that Saira Banu the actress can be replaced, but nobody can substitute my duty towards my family.

We all act differently in certain places. We don't want to admit it, but we're different where we grew up than we are with our family and than we are with the guys that we went to college with or our fraternity brothers. People just exist differently. It's small, subtle things, but different colors come out. That's all there is to it.

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.

The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity.

I'm a Londoner, and I feel I can't live anywhere but London, but I feel more connected to Ireland as a country. I 'get' Irish people and the humour here, which is more subtle.

I think that racism has gotten more subtle, and it's not even racism anymore: it's placism. Like where you live or whether you went to community college or Harvard, and it exists within the race.

It's a really subtle kind of thing. It makes me feel like Randy Harrison is not a human being to them.

It's always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that's the person I'm going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it's there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain't me.

It doesn't annoy me but I think of myself as a presenter who is gay, rather than a gay presenter. It's a subtle distinction, but that's how I view it.

My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It's a narrative I never imagined for them.