A Quote by Benjamin Clementine

When I lived in Paris, I would shop at antique shops and buy these huge coats because I was very cold. And then I started performing in them because I felt safe. I never stopped doing that.
This is how I started: My mom was crazy for antique shops and junk shops, and my sister and I would play this game where, if we were driving with my parents and saw a junk shop or an antique shop, we'd scream at the top of our lungs. My poor father would have heart failure and screech to a halt, and we'd leap out and go and explore.
Every day, I have a parcel waiting for me at home because I have shopped something, as I have physically stopped going to places to shop. I don't shop from malls because the stuff there is very common. I like to be unique and different.
I never started doing the videos because I thought they were going to get millions of views. I started doing them because I was at home, and I was bored.
In Paris in the late '40s, I started making my first reliefs. They are separate panels. I wanted to do something coming out of the wall, almost like a collage. I did a lot of white reliefs when I started because I liked antique reliefs, really old stuff.
'Teen Moms!' I started watching them like the first two seasons, and I stopped. I stopped because they are too young. I feel sorry for them. And I didn't watch that show 'Hoarders.' That thing would made my skin crawl.
Teen Moms! I started watching them like the first two seasons, and I stopped. I stopped because they are too young. I feel sorry for them. And I didnt watch that show Hoarders. That thing would made my skin crawl.
I felt a huge drive to make clothes that everybody could have because I felt ostracized by that world of beauty and fashion. I never thought I would have a part in it. Never in a million years.
It never felt real to me. I never felt I had complete ownership over Bond. Because you'd have these stupid one-liners - which I loathed - and I always felt phony doing them.
When I stopped doing ballet, I started training in the pool. I would do my barre exercises in the water, because that prevents injuries.
I'm grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over. I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. That's why they're okay stand-ups, but they're never going to be great, because they don't have that presence. They never built those muscles up.
So if I want to buy a light in a shop and I don't find a light that I like, I think to myself what would I like? What would I like to buy? Then I started to imagine and design it for myself a lot of the time.
Twelve years ago me and Allanah became really sick of writing pop songs, ... Eventually we dug a grave for the Thompson Twins, pushed them in there, and then moved to New Zealand. Before that I'd lived for a long time in south London where reggae was the music of the streets around me. You'd hear it booming out of people's windows and shops, and you could buy great old reggae singles for 50p (NZ1.30) in second hand shops. I'd always loved that sound, so soon after we got here I started making electronic dub records with my mate Rakai Karaitiana as International Observer.
I became a very passionate Christian when I was 17. I started writing and performing poetry at different venues across the U.K. I started performing from then, really.
I would go with my husband to the tailors where he gets his shirts made, and I would watch the bespoke process. I would ask them, "Would you be able to make that for me?" And they would always say, "Well, yes, but no." They were very French about it. I decided I would just do it for myself. And I started doing that. Then other people would notice, and want it. So I started doing things for friends, little pieces, and my own line grew that way.
My experiences growing up - my father lived in New York, so I was going out there in the summers and meeting really interesting people and people having what seemed to me to be extraordinary experiences and really taking advantage of these wonderful opportunities. And so I will go - I would go to the big city and watch these people performing onstage and doing television and films. And then I would go back to Hayward, and it just suddenly felt that much smaller and sort of limiting because I had this hyper awareness of how much larger the world was.
I don't buy trends, because the pieces don't last and I wind up never wearing them. That's why I like to shop with my children; they'll always tell me the truth.
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