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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Grace Jones Quotes

I am an actress first, a singer second.

– Grace Jones

I wanted to be a ‘jungle mom’, where you’re giving birth and getting up and doing things straightaway.

– Grace Jones

I don’t wear jewelry, so I wear furs. I don’t have diamonds.

– Grace Jones

If you want me to work with you, then come with an idea. Come with music.

– Grace Jones

I have been so copied by those people who have made fortunes that people assume I am that rich. But I did things for the excitement, the dare, the fact that it was new, not for the money. And too many times I was the first, not the beneficiary.

– Grace Jones

Human beings should stick together. Honestly, if I see a red-haired person with blue eyes now, I say, ‘Is your granny black?’

– Grace Jones

The problem with the Dorises and the Nicki Minajes and Mileys is that they reach their goal very quickly. There is no long-term vision, and they forget that once you get into that whirlpool, then you have to fight the system that solidifies around you in order to keep being the outsider you claim you represent.

– Grace Jones

Normally, I stay away from politics – unless I’m going to run for president.

– Grace Jones

Sometimes we’d have to climb a tree and pick our own whips to be disciplined with. When you had to pick your own whip, you knew you were in for it.

– Grace Jones

I don’t like people who hide things.

– Grace Jones

There will always be a replacement coming along very soon – a newer version, a crazier version, a louder version. So if you haven’t got a long-term plan, then you are merely a passing phase, the latest trend, yesterday’s event.

– Grace Jones

I didn’t think I had a voice at all, and I still think of myself as an interpreter of songs more than a singer. I thought it was too deep; people thought I was a man. I had a very strong Jamaican accent, too; the accent really messed me up for auditions.

– Grace Jones

I’m always rebelling. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.

– Grace Jones

If people think I’m angry, I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble. I like sometimes for people to be afraid of me. But it’s not really anger; it’s discipline.

– Grace Jones

More having to do whatever anybody said you had to do. I couldn’t really do anything on my own. But as I got older and then came to America and then Grace became my name, it somehow freed me. All of a sudden, I can be this other person.

– Grace Jones

This is what I would say to my pupil: ‘You have become only your fame and left behind most of who you were. How are you going to deal with that? Will you lose that person forever? Have you become someone else without really knowing it? Do you always have to stay in character for people to like you? Do you know that you are in character?’.

– Grace Jones

I see myself as no color. I can play the role of a man. I can paint my face white if I want to and play the role of white. I can play a green, I can be a purple. I think I have that kind of frame and that kind of attitude where I can play an animal.

– Grace Jones

People always like to make me seem taller than I am.

– Grace Jones

Listen to my advice; I have some experience. In a way, it is me being a teacher, which is what I wanted to be. I still feel I could go into teaching. What is teaching but passing on your knowledge to those who are at the beginning? Some people are born with that gift.

– Grace Jones

I am not a diva: I am a Jones. ‘Diva’ is so overused. Diva, icons, the whole thing, legends… To be a diva, what is that?

– Grace Jones

They used to call me Firefly when I was a little girl, and I always tried to figure out why I was being called a firefly. I was really black, black, black from the sun. After being in Jamaica for 13 years, my eyes were really beady and white, and my skin was really black. I must have really looked like a fly. My eyes looked like lights, like stars.

– Grace Jones

For me, a diva is like the great opera singer, the great film star – out of reach, in their own world, with a real gift for invention: attention-demanding performance artists with a flamboyant, compelling sense of their own importance so special and inimitable it verges on the alien.

– Grace Jones

I was a go-go dancer, too. I called myself ‘Grace Mendoza’ to fool my parents.

– Grace Jones

I’m not a rock star; I’m a soft person.

– Grace Jones

There is some Eighties music that is just timeless. The melodies, the lyrics… I called it church. Church in club. You can shout and dance. The best of the Eighties was club church.

– Grace Jones

Some people are both genders. I think you just come out the way you come out, and you have to embrace it honestly.

– Grace Jones

Mum was a high-jumper and qualified to go to the Olympics, but it got into the newspapers that she was married to my father, and the church put pressure on her to pull out of the Olympic team, saying, ‘You can’t be exposing all your legs.’ That’s how strong the influence of the church was on us all.

– Grace Jones

I like to experiment, and as an actress, I always thought it’s good to be open about a lot of things.

– Grace Jones

My brother used to get beaten up all the time because he was very effeminate.

– Grace Jones

I like dressing like a guy. I love it. When I was modeling I used to do pictures where I would dress up like my little brother. No makeup, and I looked like a boy.

– Grace Jones

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