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 CLEMENTINEWe’re all competent in different ways, we’ve just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.
More Benjamin Clementine Quotes
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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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I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it’s quite small and contained.
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[My music] is opposite to fashion.
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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 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 not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped.
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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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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 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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You can’t judge people by their cover.
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Composing was more difficult than writing things down.
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Happiness is overrated and money can’t justify it.
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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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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.”
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE