A Quote by John Grant

I can't create music if I'm wearing a mask and not being myself, and that was the problem with The Czars. — © John Grant
I can't create music if I'm wearing a mask and not being myself, and that was the problem with The Czars.
Even when I was a young kid, I always told my uncle that, when I became a wrestler, I wanted to be Rey Mysterio, Jr. and I wanted to wear the mask. I always pictured myself wearing a mask. I dreamed about it for so long. I wanted to be one of those luchadores who wore the mask, the cape, and the fancy outfits.
The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.
I had to get used to wearing a mask and wearing a prosthetic and performing with those things while singing and expressing myself through stylized movement, while keeping it as human as possible so the audience could be closer to the horror of the Phantom.
I feel like, in the Czars, for example, I was afraid. I couldn't express myself. I didn't have a connection to myself. That's one of the huge reasons why it was such a difficult existence. I put a lot of that on myself. I couldn't access myself. I couldn't look at myself, because I was too ashamed.
All politicians are going to mask to some degree in order to present themselves in away they think will get them votes. What's different in Obama's case is that he's wearing a racial mask, this 'bargainer's' mask, and I think very effectively, whereby he gives whites the benefit of the doubt. He's essentially saying, 'I am going to presume you are not racist, if you won't hold my race against me.' So, his mask is a distinctly racial one.
Freedom will cost you the mask you have on, the mask that feels so comfortable and is so hard to shed off, not because it fits so well but because you have been wearing it so long.
I was given a mask of myself by Frances Barber when we opened 'Julius Caesar.' I looked much younger and prettier. Wearing it was certainly cheaper than Botox.
I never had any trouble being myself. Myself was a problem for a lot of people, but I didn't have a problem.
Sometimes we mask ourselves to further reveal ourselves, and it's always been connected to me with being a writer: We tell lies to tell a greater truth. The story is a mask; the characters you create are masks. That appeals to me. Aside from that, too, in the carnival the masks were beautiful, and offered a vision of Haitian creativity.
What would be frightening about me jumping out of the bush wearing a pig mask is not the sudden surprise, not me, and not the pig mask, but that the ordinary world had split open for a moment to reveal some possibility never previously considered.
I create music; I create painting; I create whatever I want to create. I create, what you say, clothes. I create, I don't know, dance move. I create anything.
I create music for myself first of all because if I'm not happy with the music I create, I can't make anybody else happy.
At least we both know how shitty the world is. You wearing a beard as a mask to disguise it. I wearing my tired smile. I don't see how you do it. One hundred thousand university students marching with you. Toward A necessity which is not love but is a name.
A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself -- or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind. You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.
You can only stare at a clown mask so long. After a few minutes it's no big deal anymore. So people start paying attention to the music instead of what the clown is doing, or what he is wearing, or how cool his spikey hair is.
Being a shy child, I always longed for a mask. Even in my adult life, I have glasses, they are my mask.
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