Quotes About Identity

Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.

People used to call me violent, savage.

When I'm making a collage, there are a lot of things about it that are violent.

There were lots of perceptions about me, right from being gay to casting couch to being a drunkard to getting violent, none of what I am in real life.

The characters I've played have been mostly violent, and I'm so far from being violent or aggressive. I spend a lot of time watching 'Fireman Sam' with my three-year-old son Louis.

One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.

For my own part, once I became a teenager, I experienced severe and violent racism.

It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my mind: a violent place.

The main problem with films is that everybody always thinks of us as a violent people. We are not. We are spiritual. And when you show someone without a sense of humor or families, which is the way you usually see Indians in movies, then they are without a spiritual base and become subhuman.

Everyone assumes I've become this nice person overnight since joining the 'X Factor,' and before that, I was an aggressive, violent chav that just goes around attacking people and swearing every five minutes. It's just brought to the fore certain qualities that were always there.

Music is an expression of who you are, and - at least in that sense - I think I epitomize Black Lives Matter. I'm a big black man, and I'm easily misunderstood. Before I started wearing these African clothes, people would assume that I was a threat and that it was O.K. to be violent toward me.

I obviously wouldn't say on nationwide TV that I thought America was racist, sexist, homophobic and violent if they asked me why I left. I would just say America wasn't a culture I felt comfortable in. But anybody with a brain would understand what I'm trying to say.

If I go to Liverpool, everyone's really nice to me. But when we do 'Scousers' I portray Liverpudlians as a bunch of thieving, unemployed, violent wastrels, which is a really terrible thing to do.

We all want the same thing, love and acceptance. That's pretty much it. And what I've learned is that unless I'm happy with my side of the nickel, it can change violently - quickly.

When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.

That's one of the things I resent the most violently. To have to take your own life and give it away to the public, in pieces.

When I walk down the street in a dress, people think I'm transgender. The issue isn't that I'm embarrassed to be thought of as transgender: the issue is that people treat transgender individuals so violently, especially if they think it's male to female.

Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with 'keeping it real' are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.

I feel such a connection to 'Violet.'

I feel like you have to tell people who you are, but you don't have to be disrespectful about it. But you also don't have to be a shrinking violet.

I want Violet to be proud of every little thing that is her - her hair, her body. We're all different, and from early on, I've always said she has a very confident personality, and I want her to maintain that.

People expect you to change when you become a mother, and of course my priorities changed when I had Violet. She's number one in my life and the best thing that ever happened to me, but I still have fun. I am still myself, but that is made out to seem like I am rebelling against motherhood.

Next to my mom, I'm actually a shrinking violet.

My name itself is extremely campy. Violet Chachki literally translates to purple doodad.