I mean, really: He called me 33 percent lesbian, which was a gross underestimation of my lesbian-ness.
When people call me illegal, calling me illegal says more about you than it does about me.
I've never given myself a nickname.
I do realize the impulse to classify people by the food and art they consume is strong - sometimes I have to remind myself not to do that.
You don't have to label yourself, because it's not set in stone. It's so fluid, and there's so much pressure on kids to label themselves and say, 'This is what I am; this is what I like.'
With the first novel, I was concerned I would be pigeon-holed as an Asian-American writer, and the book would be labeled for Asian-Americans only.
I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever.
When I land in a country and they ask for 'occupation,' I always just put 'artist.' I think that covers all of it.
People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.
Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.
When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay.
I'm somewhat wary of being called 'woke' because it feels absolute in a way that I don't think is realistic.
I kind of say I am a stylish geek, to make myself feel better, but I am definitely a geek.
It just so happens that I'm trans. It shouldn't have to be like 'Oh, that's the trans model selling the trans clothes.'
I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.
You make a first impression and people never forget it. If people want to think of me as the wacky 'Juno' lady forever, I could think of worse ways to be labeled.
There was a really long period of time when, if the newspapers ever referred to me, even if I was talking about, I don't know, cake making, they would put 'lesbian Sandi Toksvig.'
If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.
People want to peg you as alternative R&B when they hear soul or see the color of your skin. It's comfortable when people see artists of color or artists that come from a different country to put that brand on us. It's just not as linear as that.
For someone like me, who prefers to keep their life as private as possible, it was disconcerting to have to define so much about myself. I don't want to be labeled as one thing or another.
Black comics, they only watch Black comedians. You're a comedian; you're not just a Black comedian. You're a comedian. I try to get that through to everybody.
I hate being called a homosexual because I don't feel that way. It really upsets me ... Being gay can happen in any walk of life, in any world. If you have one gay experience, does that mean you're gay? If you have one heterosexual experience, does that mean you're straight? Life doesn't work quite so cut and dried.
One of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control.
To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.
Twenty years ago, when I started writing, I didn't define myself as an African-American writer. And then you write books and you're focused on what's inside your books, and that kind of term is generally used on the outside, by the critical establishment.
