Sonny Bill Williams Quotes

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

You get to an age where you get tired of hiding behind whatever people think is correct.

The society wants you to have beautiful personalities; the society wants you to have personalities which are comfortable for the society, convenient for the society. But the person is not the real thing, the individual is the real thing. The individual is not necessarily always comfortable to the society - in fact he is very inconvenient.

Life is very, very short, and you can choose to live it how you want. You can choose to dumb yourself down and not express yourself just so you can fit in, just so people won't dislike you.

For one thing I tend not to see myself in various moulds that people fit me into.

When you're younger, it's all about conformity and being easily influenced - especially in terms of fashion. You just follow the trends. Whatever is hot at the moment, you want to get it. You basically just want to be doing what everyone else is doing. But as you get older, those things aren't as important.

I think most Americans, when we're building a character, we look at the specificity of what that person is, in particular.

My purpose in life does not include a hankering to charm society.

I'm more American than anything else. I grew up in China, but I was fulfilled at a young age by American music. It was my biggest inspiration.

There are all these languages that keep people in place that conform us to a set of terms. It's why I think the whole idea of identity as something that is something of a straitjacket. That most of us like to think of as natural and innate. That we just find and go, 'Yeah, that's who I am.'

Growing up around people with the same culture as me made me a lot tougher.

I was a victim of the American Dream, the bourgeois, middle-class dream. All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.

Growing up, I had really big hair. Giant hair. As I got older, the goal was to make it smaller - I wanted to look like everyone else. So I got a weave. I would manipulate my hair and try to make it straight.

I always tried to fit in, so I was a cheerleader with the orange skin and white-blonde hair, and Hooters was part of that.

There was so much pressure to fit in, I tried to force myself to be like everyone else. The last thing any teen wants is to be 'uncool.'

I don't think Latino; I think like me. If that happens to be Latino, then I guess that's me. But it doesn't affect my comedy in any way.

Through fashion, it's possible to express deep values of one's creative talent and also the values that are expected of society.

The older I get, the more the lying, the losing touch with your true thoughts and feelings, and the compromises required to fit in seem not worth the effort. It's my one go on Earth; why spend any more of it conforming to other people's rules and ideals?

When you're growing up, the most important thing is to try to not change yourself too much. Be you, because everyone else is taken.

I never quite lived up to the image of the black man as I saw it growing up. I was never listening to the right music at the right time or wearing the right clothes at the right time. I was still listening to Michael Jackson, and everyone had sort of moved on to gangster rap. Alanis Morissette when everyone else was listening to En Vogue.

I'm not out here trying putting on an act like I'm crazy. In my opinion, everyone else is crazy. They're the ones who put on an act for you, doing what they're told in front of the camera.

All your experiences, the places you go to, the encounters you have with people, and, of course, your cultural trappings all make you who you are, and who you are makes your music.

Growing up in an Ethiopian household allowed me to feel like I had an audience before I had an audience.

Our identities really are a constant negotiation between the story we tell about ourselves and the narrative our societies like to recite.

They tell me what to wear, how to look, what I should say, how I should be. Until recently I had given into that pressure, I lost sight of who I was. I listened to opinions of people and I tried to change who I am because I thought others would accept me for it. And I realized I don't know how to be anything but myself.