Allen Iverson Quotes

I know one of the reasons I first started making Youtube videos was because no one looks like me.

I want people to understand that from the minute Lady Gaga arrived, she created a new set of rules: being different is good; embrace it.

I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else.

I'm just trying to take a stand for people that are unique.

When I first came out, I was wearing full-on traditional Nigerian wear. I got told by a lot of people that I should just tone it down. I only stopped when I realized there's only so many prints you can wear.

I don't think it's any secret that there's a lack of diversity in Silicon Valley. But that, to me, is actually quite beautiful. It allows me to be fully me because there is no one else to look at and say, 'Oh, I should be more like that.'

Of course I want the things I write to reflect well on me or anyone who might feel represented by me, but also, I'm not writing a guidebook on how to be or how my people should be seen. I'm telling very specific stories.

I'd watch shows like 'The Kids in the Hall' or 'Twin Peaks,' and I'd see weird people being celebrated and appreciated without compromising their weirdness. On 'The Facts of Life,' I'd see girls who were pudgy, beautiful, popular, tomboyish - many ways of being female - and I'd feel quietly reassured.

Hip-hop is not about pretense. You can be missing an eye; you can have an ice-cream cone in your face; you can run around with Bantu knots; you can decide to wear gold, all everything. It's not about how you look - it's about what you say. It's about what message you're getting across.

To hang out in a gay bar or put on a sequined halter top makes me feel like a total person.

In the hip-hop community, it's about how real are you, or how strong can you be, and really my music just reflects me. If you can accept me, then you can accept my music.

It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?

I'm different, and I'm not afraid to be different.

I want to make films that make a difference. I want to be out and hope that that will make things better for gay people and for myself. I hope one day I can start to make the kind of projects or be involved with kind of projects that can really make a difference.

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

Woody Allen is really the ultimate. I love that he believed in himself enough to do what he did. And I have that same feeling - that there's nobody that looks like me in movies, nobody would cast me as a romantic lead, but I want to do it and I feel confident that I can.

I love the mixture that's in me. It makes me me. And that's why it's such a shame that people waste energy in denying who they are.

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

I'd like to be the role model to teach other people who have Down's syndrome to be actors and actresses and to be themselves and not try to be a big shot.

It's possible and available to any artist to be himself or herself on their own terms, to be accepted and embraced by black people. You don't have to be a thug to get love from black people.

I think that instead of feminism being a political thing, it should be an act of creativity. It's more of a rock n' roll thing.

Now I've devoted my life to making sure that I can be a trailblazer for any other African American kids or any other gay kids or any other kids that just feel weird or uncomfortable and have their own issues and don't know how to express themselves. I want to be like a beacon for those kids now.

What's so kind of beautiful about the whole thing was that everything that made me not right for all of those hundreds of commercial auditions that I went on and no one ever wanted me for is what made me perfectly right for 'Real Women Have Curves'.

I think what makes me different from the average Joe is that I feel free to be myself and express myself in the way that I want. If that makes you mad, we're living in a world of dire straits. If anything, it makes you more sane.

Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I'm political. Sometimes that's all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.