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.
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINEThe 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.
More Benjamin Clementine Quotes
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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 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 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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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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When I started singing about my life and what I was going through, I felt more confident. It was my own life, I was being myself, I was telling people what was happening.
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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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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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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 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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Composing was more difficult than writing things down.
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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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I was very rebellious, but my family was strict Christians – they would ask us, “What’s the shortest verse in the Bible?” and I was the one who always said “John 11:35” straightaway. It stayed with me, the Bible has stayed with me.
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People take things too literal in the Bible and it’s totally wrong.
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Some people will never be able to get their real self, but that’s fine, because their fake self is also part of them.
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