Singers From The United States

"Women were my obvious focus…because it is not always easy having power and being female…That’s the way it was. It wasn’t that all men were terrible or that the situation was unbearable. It was a cultural problem."

"Starting out as a dancer gave me an aspect of mindfulness that I didn’t even realise that I was getting…because to dance is to be aware of every piece of your body while you’re moving. It’s like a meditation unto itself."

"I believe that every culture contributes to fashion. But, I do remember Polly Mellen telling me, 'You know where we got hot pants from? We used to go up to Harlem and we would just look at what all the community people were wearing.'"

"At my moment, there was always a token black person. And in the ’70s I became that token black person. It brings out the worst in people when they think there’s only one spot, where for everyone else there are lots of spots."

"…If you start thinking about representation too much—and you think about what movie should exist for an Asian-American person, and for an Asian-American male, or what you would like to see an Asian-American male doing on TV or in movies, even though that’s a legitimate thing to think about—it clouds my ability to go, “Oh, that’s just a fun thing. I’d like to throw myself into that situation”..."

"I’ve always said that it really bothers me that so much of Asian representation in cinema has been people running away from their Asian-ness to find love elsewhere…"

"I’ve spent my life trying to figure out what Asian-ness means…but you know, I really gotta figure out what whiteness means. We all have to figure out what it means, apparently, for our survival."

"On a political level, I just found that I was more excited by what my skill-set could bring to film and television. Asian [American] theater has stretched the boundaries a little bit, but at the time, [it] was much more involved in what I thought was an older form of expression. It was much more about identity plays, explaining who we were as Asian Americans through dramas. And that didn't interest me as much. I was interested in people who weren't going to theater, and reaching them. That always excited me more, and to this day, theater, though on a formal level is the ideal place for an actor, on some political level, I find it frustrating that theatergoers are mostly rich -- maybe that's unfair -- mostly white…"

"…I tell them the funny stories of the models trying to knock me off of the runway. They are laughing and giggling. I get them. Then we do a fashion show. I get them walking and strutting, and we have fun. Not only is it a fashion show, but we also talk about who they are and what they wish for. I’ll ask an 11-year-old girl to give me one of three wishes, and she’ll say, “That my mother believes me.” Heartbreaking. I would imagine it’s stemmed from some of the altercations in my life with abuse. I always tell them that I get more out of this than they do."

"For generations in this country, beauty was traditionally represented by three very distinct ideals in virtually all media: blond hair, blue eyes and fair skin...My cover shattered that notion forever….Women of color could boldly say to the world, ‘Hey, look at me! I’m here and I have value and I am beautiful.'"

"Superman has got nothing on me because my kids gave me that perspective...They don’t know what they did for me. Maybe they’ll find out now and will read about it when they are big. They’ll understand what they did for me. If they gave up their piggy bank, then I have to give mine."

"Being Ricky Martin back then and what I was feeling were not compatible...I was the sex symbol and I needed to dance and I needed to make girls crazy and I couldn't say that I was gay. It was a struggle."

"...the most uncomfortable and saddest times of my life. I thought my emotions were evil because that’s what they told me. You’re not supposed to feel like this."

"I won’t stop singing in Spanish...It’s my mother tongue. [It’s] important to let people know more about Latin culture and exchange a little bit — it’s what I’ve been doing for seven years, since I released my first solo album."

"To my mom, I was a pain in the ass. To my dad, I was the light of his eyes. And to me, I was awkward," he said. "I had glasses. I weighed two pounds. My dad always told me, and as God's honest truth, 'Son, we're ugly. Work on your personality.'"

"Each song is like a short movie...And each character is different."

"...I was born and raised in Spanish Harlem and lived in New York most of my adult life. My life, my music and career started here. The fact that I no longer live in New York doesn’t mean I don’t consider this amazing city my home. I walked and lived in these streets for most of my life..."

"The first time I saw myself on a movie screen, I was disappointed because I didn’t look outrageously beautiful. It’s not that I looked ugly. It’s just that I had these funny notions of how you’re supposed to look when you’re in the movies. You’re supposed to look like Elizabeth Taylor, who was my idol. Guess what? I didn’t look like her. And my voice sounded very high, which indeed it was. So I was thrilled and at the same time, I was somewhat disappointed. But I thought, I can work on my voice. I can make that better."

"It never occurred to me when I was 10 years old that I was going to end up representing an entire—not just community, but nationality. That’s not something I ever thought of, because I wasn’t a political person then. But I was forced to become one because of the circumstances. At some point, I discovered that a lot of people were suffering unnecessarily. I really started to understand that everyone has a responsibility to others and to a community, that you are not the only person in the world you simply represent, whether you like it or not."

"I'm from the streets of New York," he said. "I have a tattoo in my handwriting that I say: Those who say, don't know. Those who know, don't say. Your power and influence is largely based on what a steel trap your mouth is.""

"I take all the negative things in my life and turn them into positive things."

"I've always had this image of this strong, sprightly person who is undaunted by anything; on the contrary, I was one of the shyest, most unsure people you ever met in your life. But I have one very specific quality: I'm plucky. I really am. I would say that's a perfect description of my personality. I am able to get up and dust myself off and keep moving forward. I'm very stubborn. I never knew that about myself. But I realize how stubborn I am when I look at all the terrible things that happened to me and how I just get up and keep going."

"It was my choice, because I was being offered such crappy stuff. I was only offered gang movies on a way lesser scale and it was like the same fucking battle again. I couldn’t believe it. And it broke my heart. It. Absolutely. Broke. My. Heart. I thought: ‘I’ll wait for something better,’ and something better kept not coming. It was horrific."

"I was told I was crying all the time I was unconscious…It wasn’t done for drama, that’s for sure. What I really wanted to do was kill the bad Rita who was always getting me in trouble, but it turned out if you’re going to kill the bad Rita, you’re also going to kill the good one."

"What I say to my gente [people] is to hang on, and to remember who they are, be proud of who they are, and keep talking. And keep complaining, and just don't ever — don't give up. That's always been my motto anyway. My motto has always been "persevere" — perseverancia. And that's what we need to do."

"He didn’t like the raucous side of me and I love that side of me. I think I’m funny as hell and I think I’m cute and I think I’m mischievous. I know I’m mischievous. And that’s the kind of thing he discouraged, and that makes me very sad, because he was missing out on something pretty wonderful about me…You know, I think I owe an enormous debt to psychotherapy. Without that, I wouldn’t be the Rita you know and love."

"I think part of the reason is because, unlike the black community, we don’t mainly come from America. We come from all kinds of countries and we’ve siloed ourselves rather than supporting each other, as we should have. We still think of ourselves as Argentinian or Puerto Rican or Mexican rather than Hispanic. Until we get over that and become one big wonderful community, we’re still going to have problems."

"I'm not a phenomenon who exists out of time, an anachronism of sociological significance. I'm a person."

"It got me roles. And you know, for a while, that was wonderful — I was in the movies. But after a while I began to understand that it was really very demeaning. And I began to feel more and more and more diminished. I was already very unsure of myself anyway, because when I was a very young girl in New York City I ran into an awful lot of racial bias, and I got called some pretty nasty names, like 'spic' and — all the words you heard in West Side Story came directly from the streets — 'garlic mouth,' 'pierced ear.' So by the time I was doing those kind of roles — for a living, practically, in Hollywood — I was beginning to feel pretty bad about myself."

"If you have been traumatised from the time you were a child to believe you were a ‘spic’, that you were a garlic-mouth, that you are not worthy, it takes a long time to get rid of that. That’s why therapy so often takes so long, because you’re trying to get rid of that trash before you can deal with the you that wants to get better. I went into therapy wanting to get better, knowing that in some way I had a sickness. And the sickness was Rita hates Rita."

"I think that some people are genetically just strong. I really believe that my mom was like that. On the other hand, maybe you're forced to be that way because you realize you're either going to sink or swim, and the choice you make determines the kind of person you become…"

"I have a great sense of humor about aging, and I think I’m one of the funniest people I know when it comes to aging, because I misplace stuff and I drive everyone crazy looking for the house keys or something. Once, I couldn’t find my purse, and I upended the car, upended the house. I could not find that fucking purse. And then two days ago, I opened the cabinet in the kitchen where all the doggie stuff is, and guess what? I had put it in there. I started laughing so hard, I nearly peed. I couldn’t stop laughing. I thought, You silly bitch."

"It’s not that I wanted to go into the male mentality, but into the duality. There’s a duality in every man and every woman. And when you have a homosexual man who’s a movie critic and he wants to make himself into a woman who somehow resembles a film goddess, like the women in film from 1935-1945, and then you have to watch how she interacts with these young people who have know idea who they’re really dealing with. The film never could embrace the different layers of complications of what’s going on with Myra/Myron…"

"You are perceiving that Rita Moreno I presented to the world. What was I gonna do, say: ‘Really, I’m a weak person’? No, that was the persona. I am now that person, but it took me a very, very long time to become her."

"I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous, and fortunate misunderstanding."

"I wanted a storybook life, to be Rapunzel and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, all the beautiful ladies that wonderful men came along on their big white horses and dragged away. Which is not remarkable, a lot of kids grow up that way. But I decided it was gonna happen."

"Whatever my film work was, it was a departure from the sex symbol previously, who was blonde and more docile than the characters I portrayed as a sex symbol…I think it was a different role for women. Women watch other women, and they are affected by that."

"A lot of times I would play a lot of roles a man would play…In One Million Years B.C.—yes, the costume was revealing. But I was outdoors all the time, I was fighting to survive, there was a girlfight. I was participating, it was physical, and I was independent. I wasn’t that pushover kind of a girl. And I think that left an impression."

"In high school I was Rocky, then after the equipment arrived, Hotrocks."

"You have to work with people, whatever assholes they might be."

"The mind is an erogenous zone."

"I am really fed up doing second-rate roles in mediocre films and working against the prejudice that comes with my "image." I have studied all my life. I am not trying to become an actress, I am an artist and an actress."

"When you're friends with Lance, you kind of weave in and out of his life but I met him in 1978 when I got to New York City and was hanging out at CBGB's. I really think that Lance was responsible for getting me to New York because I watched An American Family alone in the kitchen and none of my other family members were interested in it, and I was fascinated, as everybody my age was, by Lance and I really think that's what got me there. I immediately started hanging out at all the clubs that he hung out in, and I wanted to go to the places that I'd seen on television. … You know, I honestly can't remember the exact moment but I know I was dazzled, I was just this little hick from West Virginia and I was meeting a celebrity, an icon, somebody who had made it."

"I hate these whiny middle-class kids co-opting people's real suffering … Videos ripping off news photography of people in the Third World! I mean, we live like czars. … These people who are the most fascinated with violence are the people who live the most privileged, cushy lives … They tend to be college-educated dweebs who worship William Burroughs. That's so fucking boring. When I see my friends lying in caskets and put in the ground, when you're really confronted with it, it's not cool, it's not Trent Reznor. I'd just like to make something beautiful. It's something to aspire to."

"You must know the physiology behind the art. All the ‘pink clouds’ in the world won’t help you move through the passaggio."

"I think performing Oscar the first time in Santa Fe is really what prompted me to look into proposing to my husband Scott, because it just seemed right. You know, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a huge advocate for Oscar and talked about in interviews. She came to the performances in Santa Fe and we were able to meet her and take photos with her. So it all just made sense: I think Prop 8 failed at that time, states started to make marriage legal, and it just all seemed right. So, yeah, we got married between the two runs of Oscar, and fortunately, Justice Ginsburg married us in D.C., which was such an honor. I still look back to that day and can’t really believe it! I asked her, and she said if I could come to Washington, D.C., she would be happy to do it. And on June 21st, 2014, we got married."

"The malicious and wholly fabricated claim made by Mr. Smollett resulted in over 1,500 hours of police work that cost the city over $130,000 in police overtime... The city feels vindicated in today's ruling that he is being held accountable and that we will appropriately receive restitution for his actions."

"He did tell police that from what he saw, he thought it was white or pale skin, that’s what he initially said, Obviously, you can disguise that. You can put makeup on."

"It's Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax, period. If he wanted to clear his name, the way to do that was in a court of law so that everyone could see the evidence"

"I hope he wins ... I'm happy for him that the system worked for him in his favor because the system isn't always fair, especially for people of color. So I'm glad it worked out for him. It's not my place or any other person's place to judge him or what not, but I'm glad the he's nominated I hope he wins because I'd be interested to hear his speech"