Quotes About Expression

You need a big ego to be an artist.

I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There's an expression that I get to have in acting that I can't consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.

I think I'm needed - as an artist, as an individual, as an entity, an enigma, an exhibitionist, an entertainer - as an alternative.

If I wasn't plagued by needing to write things, that would perhaps be a blessing.

If I do five, six records that sound great, I want it to come out as fast as it can. I don't care how many copies it sells. It's about musically moving the needle.

Needless to say, I like to create a unique sound for each project I do.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

I feel like everything needs to be stylised; that's always been my mindset.

Music needs room to breathe.

I have a lot of aggression in me that needs to come out in a not-very-precise or articulate way.

We all are scared. First of all, as a culture, we're constantly told that if you start to express yourself or express your needs, you're needy. You're too emotional. And they put all these negative connotations on it. That has started since we were kids, especially for men.

One way to make a positive out of a negative is that you can put it into your work.

The negative aspects of Scottish Nationalism are a kind of aggressive complacency, that sort of boasting; but that's an expression of insecurity, I think, of a lack of confidence.

I've been arrested several times. I've been known to dress in ludicrous fashions. I've also built a career out of negative reviews.

Without sounding negative, I'm not a huge fan of a lot of stand-up. I'm more interested in an absurd kind of theater.

I just had the joy of taking pictures, and I never cared about my negatives. I just gave them away whenever anybody asked for them.

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.

If you listen to most of my songs, the lyrics are pretty kind of dark, but I like to put it behind happy music because then it evens it out... I'm really happy, actually. Obviously I have my bad moments, but I always challenge myself to not put negativity out there because there's already enough.

Language is the means by which we negotiate our relationship with time.

Growing up in the mid-to-late '90s in London, you start seeing the explosion of drum'n'bass and then the birth of U.K. garage and grime. I decided to focus a lot of my energies as an aspiring MC. It was a very natural way to express yourself as a kid from a certain kind of neighborhood.

With a lot of comedians, one of their major attributes is that they look comedic, with a certain hangdog or manic expression. I look like the neighborhood bully. That doesn't elicit laughter.

I don't know if I hadn't grown up poor, and in the neighborhood I did, if I would have had that much to bring to my art form. I call upon my past with characters.

If I can just play, it doesn't matter where we are... Japan, Australia, or here in the neighborhood.

I wanted to make music for my people that I grew up with in my neighborhood. That's kind of the long and the short of that whole 'Diary' album.