I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it’s quite small and contained.
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINEConfidence came from people. I think I’m very confident in me, as a human being.
More Benjamin Clementine Quotes
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I started understanding William Blake and George Orwell more and more. It’s amazing how we go to school when we’re so young, read all of these books, just trying to memorize them. When you start to live, you don’t have to memorize anything.
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We have the real self and the false self, there’s nothing wrong with them, and everyone has both of them.
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We’re all competent in different ways, we’ve just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.
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When you have a lot of fake selves, most of the time it’s because you haven’t had parents around so you try to build characters to protect yourself.
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I was independent. There was no one there to talk to; I didn’t even want to talk to anyone. I started to write about what I was experiencing, and I had no choice, so I was never scared.
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Confidence came from people. I think I’m very confident in me, as a human being.
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I think it is all about creating characters, mixing them up with the stars and the light-years, and coming back to Earth, because we’re from this universe. We’re not just New York or London; we’re stars.
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The experience that I had in Paris I could never have ever again in my life. This is when I grew up as a young man.
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Even if someone thinks there’s a mistake I’ve made on the piano, to me it’s not a mistake; it’s how it’s meant to be.
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I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.
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Poetry itself is music. I’m just lucky that I can convert it into music.
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William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician.
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I’ve always been shy, but every time that I sing or I perform, when music comes out of me, it is the only thing I can relate to, it’s the only thing I can give.
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If I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do, my real self comes out. But whether or not I’m aware of it, no matter what happens, I’m always going to have a fake self and I’m not going to judge my fake self.
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I loved English literature – if didn’t it would have been hard – but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines.
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The real self is who you are when you’re at home, when you’re comfortable, and the false self is what you’re pretending – and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you’re within.
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Obviously you live life for yourself and have your choice to believe what you want to believe in, but I know that the Bible can be used to appreciate life.
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When you look at the media and television, and all this Hollywood stuff, you just judge people.
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People take things too literal in the Bible and it’s totally wrong.
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I’m from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn’t really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.
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You can’t judge people by their cover.
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If you’ve got great parents, once you grow up and have to live by yourself, you’re going to create some fake self as you get comfortable wherever you are.
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I wasn’t quite used to writing a diary – I didn’t understand why people did it – but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.
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When I started writing again, especially when I listened to French music and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I realized that these lots talked about themselves. The greatest artists, they didn’t sing; they only spoke.
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In fact, I might be confident for the human race because of what the human race has given me. When I was in the street and bars, people always came up to me and said, “Don’t stop, keep going.”
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I’m not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped.
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