Ananya Birla Quotes

You don't have to look like a warrior in every role.

My skin is my canvas. The artwork on it represents something that is very powerful and meaningful in my life. I look at my skin as something of a living diary because all my tattoos represent a time in my life. And I never wish to shut the door on the past, so I carry it all with me.

I feel like it's always about embracing what it is that you think is wrong with you. It's often times your greatest 'flaw' which actually forays into what is also your greatest strength.

On some level, we as human beings can be who we want to be.

You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, 'I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself.'

It's that beautiful thing to love your weaknesses, your insecurities, and then put them all on blast. That's why I started writing, and that's why it was so hard to do it in public.

I was just a big fan of tattoos always growing up, and I wanted something cool that symbolizes what I've been through in my life, and everything on my chest and my back is like a collage.

When I was younger, I thought I was too young to really be personal. I thought that what I was feeling and thinking might be half-baked.

Tattoos are like stories - they're symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.

I don't have tattoos, I have scars!

Since my dimples only appear whenever I smile, facing everything in life with that smile is a wonderful feeling. Eyes are also the window to one's self. Just a look can reflect your identity and experiences.

I like 'me'/'I' songs.

To me, tattoos are a way of people being able to express themselves and have other people look at them and get a little insight into who they are, without ever even saying a word to them.

It feels weird to say there's more to me than that, like I'm being overdramatic, and a tear rolls down my cheek. But, no - I do like I feel like there's more to me than just baseball.

Growing up in postwar Japan has made me the person I am, but it is not why I do the work I do. It is a very personal thing - everything comes from inside.

I want my tattoos to be a story of my life.

Binaries aside, we are the products of our relationships with our identities - cities we have built, bodies we have embraced, kindred souls we've cherished, our memories, our dreams, the fears we hide, the pain we hold - identities that cannot be reduced to a collection of labels.

People like to come up to me and tell me that I’ve got nice ink. Except these tattoos aren’t just decorations. They are declarations. Every tattoo I have tells its own story about who I am. Drug-free. Honor. And a war against the system.

I'd like to think that, at the end of the day, you can look at the things that I made as a young person and the things I'll continue to make as I get older and they'll be consistently interesting and soulful things, and if you like them they'll be a part of your dimension, as well.

Sometimes you have to take the focus off of you and put it on someone else and it's funny what you can accomplish and how much strength you really have.

I'm just being myself. To me, that people are interested in Jenni, not necessarily the artist, but the woman... it amazes me still.

I have over 35 tattoos.

The older I get, the more I embrace my own idiosyncrasies.

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

Every time I rap about being a big girl in a small world, it's doing a couple things: it's empowering my self-awareness, my body image, and it's also making the statement that we are all bigger than this; we're a part of something bigger than this, and we should live in each moment knowing that.