When I perform on stage I become those male bullies, those dominators from my childhood. That’s probably why it’s so scary, because they scared me.
My husband used to shout at my mother, ‘What is wrong with your daughter? I’m married to a man.’
I’ve turned down millions of dollars to go on reality TV. It’s an absolute no-go.
I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old.
I came from a very strict background, and didn’t hear any Jamaican music when I was growing up.
To be young, really young, takes a very long time. Picasso.
If you are a fan of doing the unexpected, and I am, then it is an advantage to be highly skilled at changing your mind. If you do not want to limit yourself, then be prepared to change your mind – often.
If you are lonely when you are alone, you’re in bad company.
I can’t run out of different ideas. I am different. When can I run out of me?
I can be a pain, but most of all, I can be a pleasure.
There was always someone else in the way until I worked out how to make myself the one who was in the way of others.
One boyfriend told me that I loved myself too much. I thought, Well, you can love a boyfriend too much, but you can’t love yourself too much. Sometimes you have to love yourself to keep yourself whole. Something.
Those who demand that you conform the most to how they live are the ones who are the most scared and intimidated by life. I.
Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with breaking promises, though. You can’t go through life without breaking promises. You need to break a few rules as well. Well, a lot of rules. When.
There had been the very Jamaican revival religion that flourished in the nineteenth century, in which African rituals and Jamaican folk traditions were mixed with Christian belief, and many revivalists easily took to Pentecostalism because of its vibrant energy and faith in the power of healing. Pentecostalism incorporated rituals, spirits, and visions, but without seeming unchristian or unbiblical.
Be your own sugar daddy!
I was the first to be sent “Boogie Wonderland” and I turned it down because I didn’t believe in it. Can you imagine me singing “Boogie Wonderland”? Preposterous.
The Garage was members only, and you had to be interviewed to become a member. That was a bit strange, having to pass a test to prove how free-spirited you were, but it seemed to work. There would be a thousand, two thousand people in there – by the 1980s even more – and for a while most of them knew each other’s names.
If you survive a childhood like mine relatively unscathed, you’re lucky, and as soon as you can make up rules for yourself, that’s what you are going to do, without thinking about what you leave behind. My.
Oh,” he’d say, “nobody gets me on the dance floor but you, Grace,” as we danced to Michael Jackson. He loved Michael. They made a nice couple. I was also one of the few who could get Michael Jackson on a club dance floor dancing for the sake of it. I would have been best man for both of them if they had married, which in some universe was their destiny.
There seemed to be more happening in London than in New York, more interesting artistic people to collaborate with. I had vowed to leave America if George Bush became president, and the day after he was voted in I left.