125 Quotes by Alan Cumming

It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down.

A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn’t interest me.

These kinds of events, though seemingly glamorous and sophisticated from the outside, are often organized with the finesse of a kindergarten nativity play, and one whose teachers are all lapsed members of Narcotics Anonymous.

It’s interesting, for me sappy means sentimental and something that gets you in your heart, gets you emotional. That’s what I mean. Also, of course, it means that I’m slightly setting up the audience that there’s a bit of fun involved, as well.

Once in a while it’s good to challenge yourself in a way that’s really daunting.

Sometimes the worst thing about change is the shock of the change itself and not actually the new circumstances.

But I smell the roses not just to remind myself of how lucky I am, but also to wonder how on earth it all happened. I smell the roses to try and figure out how I came to be in the garden at all.

If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people’s songs, you’re asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it’s a song they know very well.

I never take anything for granted, and I never forget how lucky I have been, and am.