Laura Jane Grace Quotes

I feel like a lot of black men 'put on' because of what they see and because of what people tell them they have to be.

Whether at work, at home or in public, we have been trained to believe that who we are at the core of our being is often unacceptable. As a result, we work diligently to live up to - and sometimes down to - what others have made us out to be, whether or not it is an accurate reflection of who we are.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

The problems with First Ladies is that you have to set the standard. My role is to be both star and slave.

I was never good at being a boy, but I was always a good student.

I knew I had to be the gay stereotype that was on the front of the papers every day. And I did my job well. I played the game.

The label 'wife of the prime minister' is like a giant signboard pointing at my head from a Monty Python sketch. But I am not Mrs. Prime Minister. I'm a human being.

Even the toughest guys are afraid to be anything outside of the toughest guys.

I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing.

But the privileges that one has enjoyed and exploited can sometimes turn against you: nobody thinks of you as a director, you are always an actress.

There were no examples of girls like myself becoming successful actresses. To be an actress in England was a serious, upper-middle class girl's profession. I just thought I would never be accepted unless I pretended to become somebody I wasn't.

Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts.

I spent my whole life trying to play the games males play.

I was technically a Valley Girl, even though I absolutely dreaded being called that. I really hated the idea that I was a Valley Girl.

A man must know how to act in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

There is a major part of who I am that does not feel like the alpha male.

I'm happier on the runway than I am on the red carpet. Because then I am not being myself. I think, on the red carpet, it's a weird, like, 'Who am I? Am I me? Am I them?'

I got a lot of flak; in Texas, football is not only the social thing you must do, but you do it also to prove your manhood. They all couldn't conceive of why I'd want to stop to do 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'

While Muslim men describe themselves as insecure in their harems, real or imagined, Westerners describe themselves as self-assured heroes with no fears of women. The tragic dimension so present in Muslim harems - fear of women and male self-doubt - is missing in the Western harem.

Some days, I do feel that pressure of, 'What do I mean as a black woman? What am I representing?' It honestly just gives me anxiety.

I don't feel like a first lady.

I don't fit into the age, race, or class of a bestselling poet.

We're not accustomed to giving women the space to express the full range of emotions and flaws that men are permitted. Anger and aggressiveness aren't part of the scale of what is acceptable behavior in women, whereas men - in reality and in fiction - are allowed a much fuller range of emotion.

I wanted to try and get out of the stereotypical Geordie girl. I stopped wearing fake tan and wore WAG dresses. But I was really miserable.

I've been trying to make it my own way in an industry full of heels walking around in babyface costumes, and that brought out the worst in me.