When I was modelling, I spent half my life staring at thousands of perfect reflections. It got to a stage where I was losing all sense of reality - so after I quit modelling, I took all the mirrors out of my house.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the impact of external perceptions and the search for self-identity beyond appearances.
Grace Jones expresses how her experience as a model, surrounded by flawless images of beauty, distorted her perception of reality. She emphasizes the importance of disconnecting from superficial reflections to reclaim a sense of true identity and reality, suggesting that constant exposure to idealized appearances can lead to a loss of self and authenticity.
In practice
In a speech about self-acceptance, one might reference this quote to illustrate the dangers of comparison to unrealistic beauty standards.
It is wonderful how preposterously the affairs of the world are managed. We assemble parliaments and councils to have the benefit of collected wisdom, but we necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their collected passions, prejudices and private interests: for regulating commerce an assembly of great men is the greatest fool on earth
The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.
I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.
Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.
This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
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