Quotes About Identity

I consciously learned and performed my race like a teacher's pet in an advanced placement course on black masculinity.

Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

If you're based in two places, on a bad day you see only the disadvantages everywhere. On a bad day, returning to Germany brings back all kinds of spectres from the past.

All your experiences, the places you go to, the encounters you have with people, and, of course, your cultural trappings all make you who you are, and who you are makes your music.

A lot of times, you land in a city, and you're like, 'This is not my people.' I'm gonna do the show, but you don't feel like this is for you. And then, some places, you just go and just fall into a groove, and you're like, 'This feels right.'

I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.

Certain songs bring me back to certain places I've been in my life. So definitely, I listen to my stuff.

Movies give me an opportunity to go places. I'm not only a Swede but an American, not just a man of my time, but I've been living 2,000 years ago-and not just in a new country, America, but in the Holy Land, too.

As a child who lived in a lot of places, one of the hardest things for me was to join a new community. It was hardest at the kibbutz, but that was also one of the most impressive communities.

Adolescence is a plague on the senses.

Me, sexy? I'm just plain ol' beans and rice.

All British people have plain names, and that works pretty well over there.

There's a plain girl in everybody.

Things that I had created or morphed into, I almost became. I felt like a broken man having to go back to plain old Matt Hardy in many ways.

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

I am just a plain Jew; I mean have no training.

I was fed up with being just plain Jane.

No one is a plain white room. I hate going into a home that is done to the nines but has nothing do with the homeowner - no knickknacks, no art that has anything to say about the person who lives there.

America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles.

I always play girls who are quite traumatised, or a plain girl, but I'm happy with that.

When you're as plain as I am, you've gotta have a gimmick.

People don't tend to hassle me because when I've got a hat on, I look like a banker. I'm just a plain guy.

I had a nice, pert nose but a plain round face and a mop of curly brown hair. That was not the photograph of a successful model.