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.
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINEI 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.
More Benjamin Clementine Quotes
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I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it’s quite small and contained.
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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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I’m not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped.
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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 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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I felt like I was homeless anyway, so the change in environment wasn’t that much of a big deal. I felt pretty much the same. After six months of living on the streets [in Camden], I started singing, busking.
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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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You can’t judge people by their cover.
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[My music] is opposite to fashion.
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