I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself.
Sometimes we exclude things in ourselves in order to be like everybody else around us-our ethnicity, our social backgrounds, our ideas. What kind of world is it that will not allow me to be myself, and is it really good for me to be there? What part of me will die a slow death if I stay?
I really like to kid around, and it's my own way of concentrating. In order for me to be able to feel better and concentrate, I need everybody else around me to be relaxed.
I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life," she'd wept to me once, in the days after she learned she was going to die. "I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me." "Oh, Mom," was all I could say as I stroked her hand. I was too young to say anything else."
The only thing that's really hard for me is when I go to bed after everybody else in my house gets up. And that - you just feel stale. It just feels awful to be still finishing your day when everybody else is starting theirs.
I've done an awful lot of trying to make everybody else okay and happy. I have learned, now it would really be ok to wait for someone who wants to be there for me and partner with me and I'm really looking forward to it.
i expected demands. he gifted me with tenderness. i expected ego. he let me experiment. i expected disrespect. he called me beautiful. i expected him to expect perfection. he taught me all i needed to know.
Everybody reacts differently. For me defeat lingers around for different time periods. I can dwell on some for five minutes or sometimes I can still be thinking about it a week later. It all comes down to experience. You need to reflect on your mistakes and move on. Luckily you always get the opportunity to turn things around in your next performance.
I'm so lucky, I'm just really grateful for what I've got around me - children and my wife and everything else.
If it's a shot for me, if I can make a play, create for someone else, I'll do that. A lot of times you run a play, everybody's watching, everybody's locked in, everybody's pulling over, and it just makes the game tougher for me.
I was kind of a misfit, actually. When you're young, you want to be like everybody else, and I was like nobody else. I couldn't sit still. I was impulsive. I still am. What is now called a 'talent' did not serve me well as a child. I didn't have friends. I was really an outcast.
You see, you’re doing it again. Telling me nothing. (Tory) You know, trust is always a good idea…for someone else. Every time I’ve ever made the mistake of trusting someone…it was a mistake that I regretted and paid for dearly. I’m really happy that no one has ever hurt you badly. I haven’t been so lucky, okay? (Acheron)
I have the feeling that everybody was waiting for me to die so they could rediscover me. Then they found out I'm not dead yet, so they are rediscovering me while I'm still alive.
I'm flattered anytime someone has taken enough time to listen to me and make a connection to someone else, honestly. I feel very lucky that a lot of my influences are the ones that people will tweet to me that I remind them of.
The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.
I am not good at first or second impressions, and you have to spend some time with me to know me. Also, I don't want to put my best foot forward and prove something, as that is not me. I would rather be me and have you like me for who I am, instead of being someone else.