137 Quotes by John Grant

There's an incredible amount of pain involved in being a human, but this humorous stuff is essential in overcoming it.

When I came out, I found I hadn't been born with the right genes. It's quite brutal. If you're beautiful and you have the right genes, then the gay scene is a place where you can be worshipped. But if you don't, it's a different ball of wax.

The lion's share of what I listened to in the Eighties, what really affected me, was coming from Britain.

For me, every single thing I do seems to be about the process of letting go because that's what I so desperately need to do with so many things: with fear, with what people think of me, and all these things I've worried about my whole life.

I have to strip away all the layers when I'm writing the song. I have to cut through all these layers of years of putting up walls and putting protective layers around myself.

I seem to be very attracted to strong female personalities in acting and music.

I'm not saying that I don't have skills. I'm saying I don't feel like I can use my skills to achieve self-esteem. I feel like it's cheating. I think that I should have self-esteem simply because I am a human being who deserves love and deserves everything just as much or just as little as everyone else.

I feel like, in the Czars, for example, I was afraid. I couldn't express myself. I didn't have a connection to myself. That's one of the huge reasons why it was such a difficult existence. I put a lot of that on myself. I couldn't access myself. I couldn't look at myself, because I was too ashamed.

I feel like, every single decision I make and every single album I make, it's all about letting go. Letting go of the past and just getting on with it.