Quotes About Identity

I come from the Midwest, from the suburbs - growing up hanging out at the mall and looking at the corn fields across the street. I kind of was embarrassed by it for a long time. Then I decided, 'Hey, if everyone else can embrace their homeland and where they're from, I can do the same!'

I grew up in Illinois. If you were in Chicago, you were a Democrat. You get out to the suburbs and central Illinois, you're a Republican.

I was raised in the suburbs. I wasn't on a plantation or anything.

I have an affinity with Algeria, because I grew up with plenty of Algerian friends in the suburbs of Paris.

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, which as you can imagine, was not the most diverse place to grow up in as a Korean American.

I grew up in Oakland and for a long time I was the only white kid in school. Then I moved to the suburbs when I was in junior high and it was mostly white.

What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.

I was always the new kid, and I got to know the language and the politics of being on the outside, looking in. Never being in the clique - always being a student of the clique, a subversive, and I could look around and identify the other guys who were excluded.

From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own.

It was weird. Like, people came up to me and knew me as Daredevil before any footage had come out. I remember a guy on the subway being like, 'You're Charlie Cox. You're Daredevil.' And I was like, 'Yeah...?' I was barely Daredevil. I hadn't even signed the contract, you know?

When I ride the subway back and forth, sometimes I look at the other passengers and wonder if any of them are children who have been adopted or parents who have adopted.

It's hard to absorb and to allow all that attention and accolades for 'Rent' because the rest of the country doesn't know who we are. Once I walk out of the door of 'Rent,' and I'm on the subway, it doesn't matter. It's an exaggerated sense of fame.

Being a drag queen out on the subway or out on the street is still not the most safe thing you can be doing.

I have to pay a huge price to express myself. You get people asking to take photos all the time; you can't ride the subway... I still ride the subway, but there's always people sneaking photos or coming up to you.

I remember finding this book, which showed a New York subway train that had been covered in so much graffiti you couldn't recognise it was a train. I thought, 'I want to do that... how do you do that?'

We know there has been a history of needing to be closeted to succeed and be famous, especially in acting.

My father was Abe Burrows, who was a Broadway legend. 'Guys and Dolls,' 'How to Succeed,' 'Cactus Flower,' '40 Karats,' 'Can-Can,' 'Happy Hunting,' 'Reclining Figure,' it goes on. He was a legend, and when I was growing up, I was Abe Burrows' kid. That was my self-esteem.

We thought that whatever we wanted to do was right and good, simply because we were Americans, and we would succeed at it because we were Americans.

I want people to know where I come from. I think I have come really far from that, and I did it on my own. It's sort of the American dream to come from absolutely nothing and to succeed while still doing something that you love. Not compromising yourself in any way. I hope I'm making Jersey proud in that way.

I learned that instead of relying on and imitating American music, there is a better chance for an Asian artist to succeed if he or she follows his or her own culture.

Being genuinely humble and being myself has helped me succeed in my career.

But, it's because we have a harder way to succeed in life as Serbs because of the past that we had and because of the history that we had. We have to dig deeper and we have to do much more in order to be seen and to be spotted.

I think there's a misconception about the industry, that you have to change who you are to look 'cool' in order to succeed, and that's just not true.

We're far more defined by our mistakes than the things that we succeed at.