Gilbert O'Sullivan Quotes

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

The first album was a coming-of-age album - I don't like the phrase, but when you listen to it, you can tell I was having a hard time, that I wasn't socially relating to people.

One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently.

I learned with 'Birdman' that it's liberating when you just lose yourself and go after something that terrifies you.

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting.

I've been in LA for 5 years now, and it's been very freeing creatively.

It's the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.

Theater opened up a whole new world for me. It was a freedom I'd never known before.

In high school, I was kind of a loner because I had moved to a new school.

I was writing from the age of 10, and I was never really into going to discos and dances and stuff. I never told anyone at school that I did that because I feared it would alienate me even more.

I was a bit of a loner as a teenager. I never went to a single social event, because they terrified me.

I had just been in some repressive situations - the black middle-class college scene and the crazy United States Air Force - and so I just felt like getting out of that. I thought, now, that I wanted to be a writer. I had something that I wanted to do, that I was interested in doing, so I wanted to pursue that.

I think writing a solo play was the most liberating thing I ever did.

It really has become the singular motivation in my life - to surrender to the art and to the free expression of what I may be experiencing in my life spiritually. It is really hard in the face of people who don't get it, but what do you do?

I started my journey with 'Dooba Dooba.'

I didn't know how to socialize. I wasn't able to date. I felt like I was missing out on life. When I stopped diving, I started living.

I wanted to do something raw and raucous and R-rated. But then 'Middle School: the Worst Years of My Life' came to me. One reason I took this movie on is because I saw it as a really great opportunity to revisit my own past through this character.

My mother's sobriety - that's when I found the theater, that's when I moved from being a basketball player to being a musician, to being an actor, to then being a writer.

For 'Chapters', I decided to let go of my insecurities, found myself some talented R&B producers, and worked with them.

All of my experiences modeling, acting, doing theater, it's all in the work now. And the work freed me to transform myself.

Wherever the wind blows me, I'll go! My eventual goal is to have enough experience to produce something on my own.

It took me a long time to find my own voice, even after I started making my own music.

Fifty is a big corner to turn. It used to mean being put out to pasture, but it's the opposite with me. I feel more vibrant; I'm more active than I've ever been. The F-word really is freedom. It's the freedom to have dropped the rock-the rock of addiction, of family, of comparisons with other people. It's being fit and focused and kind of furious.