Tracee Ellis Ross Quotes

I want to continue to be me and share with people.

I suppose my life has always been about pleasing people, making sure they're all right, doing the right thing. Then, suddenly, you have to face up to what you want and be honest about it.

You can't respect yourself if you're afraid to be who you are.

With aging, you earn the right to be loyal to yourself.

Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, 'Ugly Cherries' is the first song I've ever written about myself. It's a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.

I've come to realize that the more I censor myself, the less people relate to me.

For a long time I tried to manage an honesty and openness about my personal life because I'm human and I'm normal - well, semi-normal.

Knowing yourself and expressing it is hip. I think knowing yourself is the real journey, for me anyway.

Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.

Feeling comfortable in my own skin has never been easy for me.

It only seems that there is something more important for you to do than to just quietly be yourself.

My hair was so much a part of my personality and all my photo shoots. I hid behind my hair. And then, I just decided I was okay with myself. To have short hair and really show my face is even more revealing than anything. It's a statement - not to everyone else, more to myself. I'm just ready to get out from behind my hair and be myself.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

I've learned that to expose yourself, to reveal yourself is a test of your humanness.

Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself.

They're trying to tell us that we're not right, so we have to buy their products. The number one cause of mental illness is not knowing who you are and you can't know who you are if you don't spend time honoring yourself, and living in the present.

I've fully embraced who I am. I stopped fighting with people and just come to realize, 'This is me. This is all of me.'

There's a difference between being a poseur and being someone who's so emotionally challenged they're kind of just doing their best to show you what they've got.

One of the hardest things to do is to be present and open and clear about who you are and what you stand for. We all have issues with that.

I've spent a lot of time self-reflecting. Especially as an actor, you have to know yourself really well in order to do things effectively. And when I dress, I dress for me. I don't dress to make other people think that I'm this way or that way.

The ideas I'm working with are ideas I'm committed to. I don't know how to soft-shoe them. I don't know how to make them more palpable. I just never knew how to be one of those girls. I wish I knew how to be that sometimes, but I don't know how to be that way.

So few people are truly themselves when they're in the spotlight.

What's important to me is love, especially that. What's important to me is growing and evolving. But ultimately, what's important to me is being real and being authentic. I've spent enough time in my life holding poses, playing roles.

I'm clearly doing what I want. I hope kids can see my act and feel like they can be slightly more comfortable in their own skin because I'm being so ridiculously comfortable in mine. I'm not that comfortable in my skin the moment I walk offstage. But I try to project that while I'm on it.

With the first two albums and with my social media, I've always been very open about who I am.