Leos Carax Quotes

I just decided I wanted to become someone else... So I became someone else.

Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it's something that's reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It's not because I don't like my given name; it's that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is - you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.

Changing my name was traumatic for me.

I had no real education because I was in and out of schools so I decided that I would completely change my look, change my image, change my name and move to New York.

I used to be called Waddy Jones. But I changed my name to Ninja because it's more me.

I never liked the name Eldred. Since nobody knew me in New York, I just changed to my middle name.

When I was 15, I changed my name legally. I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. Everything just didn't fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with, and it started with my name.

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?

Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I've thought about this. Conceptually, what I'd like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.

At 23, you can completely, literally reinvent yourself if you want to.

Before college, I was Cyndi, and then I think I went to college and I was like, 'You know what? Now I'm Cynthia.'

I remember when I got into Juilliard - which was just crazy to me, that I would be studying at a school like that - the choice to cut all my hair off was really symbolic for me.

Short of finding a place on the witness protection programme, you don't get many opportunities to completely reinvent your life. Going to university changes that. Away from home, away from parents, away from anyone who remembers you from school, you can pretend to be far cooler and more experienced than you are.

I changed my name because it didn't fit with the way I saw myself.

There's a reason why she left them, Lauren," he says. His voice is deep, and it rumbles. "What's your name?" "Um..." I don't know why I hesitate. But "Beatrice" just doesn't sound right anymore. "Think about it," he says, a faint smile curling his lips. " You don't get to pick again." A new place, a new name. I can be remade here. "Tris," I say firmly.

There's nothing more addictive or incredible in life than reinventing yourself and allow yourself to be different every day.

One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.

We all get a little tired of being ourselves sometimes. The answer is to reinvent yourself, but how do you do that and what is the cost?

I'm always thinking about identity. And the middle-school years are a time of exploring questions about who you are and who you want to be. For the first time, you see the world in a broader sense.

I've had a great metamorphosis in my life. I struggled for a number of years because I was identified with that image of the Seventies.

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

It's true. In America, you can reinvent yourself at any turn. And, you know, if things aren't going well for you in life, everyone says, change, become someone different.

I shall refract myself, yes, I shall no longer be known as the prism.

Maybe a theme that touches all of my work is people reinventing themselves.

I have always been interested in the idea of self-reinvention.