Quotes About Identity

The thing about the performance part... starting with improv and standup, you're starting with yourself as the character, and I don't feel as much like, 'Oh, I'm a vessel for -' I feel like someone who calls themselves an actor is a vessel.

I think that you can't help but bring pieces of who you are. No matter what you do, it comes through you as a vessel.

My soul existed in an African vessel hundreds of years ago as the leader of a tribe, and my tribe fought for honor.

A vest is just a totem reminding you that some people dress well, and you can be one of those people.

This is where I started life. This is where I went to uni. This is where the people I know are. This is my country, and when I put on my Great Britain vest, I'm proud, very proud, that it's my country.

I think I always wanted to be an actor - sounds a bit boring, doesn't it? And I pretended once that I wanted to be a vet because one of the teachers asked me and saying you want to be an actor sounds a little bit silly. And I do still feel a bit silly saying it. You feel a bit fraudulent.

I wanted to be a vet, a nurse, a chef - I mean, anything but the music industry. But once I hit high school, the bug really bit me. You can't deny where you come from and what's in your genes, and music definitely was. I haven't looked back since.

I remember being a kid and wanting to be so many different things. There was even one point that I wanted to be a clarinet player, and I had never even touched a clarinet, in my life. And then, I wanted to be a chef. And then, I wanted to be a vet. It's hard to decide who you're gonna be, as weird as that sounds, because we all do it.

Somehow, I feel even more lost when I work with experienced veteran stars. It makes me wonder what is the meaning of my job. Am I here to pursue my personal satisfaction, or to entertain people?

I'm OK being the veteran, but I'm still just a kid.

I think each veteran's soul has something that it needs to say. I know from my own personal traumas, it's very hard to know what that is. But when I'm watching someone else struggle, it's not as confusing for me, 'cause it's not my struggle, so I can help identify that.

I never tried to emulate The Beatles, and I never really wanted to be like The Rolling Stones. I never really felt that I had the look or the demeanor of veteran musicians.

Don't compare me to veteran actor Lakshmi who immortalised Julie in director Sethumadhavan's Chattakkari.' It's so unnerving.

If I went out and tried to be 'Shane Douglas the Superstar' when it wasn't my time, one of the veterans would have put me back in line.

It turns out that the term 'diversity' can be anything from black faculty to military veterans. Well, I am both, but have yet to be subjected to discrimination because I'm a veteran.

I reject the mobs tearing down statues of our history - north and south, Union and Confederate, founding fathers and veterans.

It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification.

Sometimes I'm happy - you can tell via Twitter. Sometimes I'm pissed off - you can tell via Twitter. I just think, at the end of the day, I don't want them to see me as a celebrity; I just want them to see me and say, 'He's like a regular person at his job right now who's mad.'

My longing to improve my looks via The Body Shop is being replaced by my longing to improve my looks via Photoshop.

I am not a big artist myself. I am, I guess, a somewhat successful songwriter now, but I think that my value is Ghost and my writing via Ghost.

Reading 'Blood Will Out,' one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships.

I thought my nose was too prominent so I had this corrected via plastic surgery in 1959.

I'm part Spanish. My paternal grandfather came from Spain via Singapore to Manila. On my mother's side it's more mixture, with a Filipino mother and a father who was Scotch Irish-French; you know, white American hybrid. And I also have on my father's side a great-great-grandmother who was Chinese. So, I'm a hybrid.

No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island.