Quotes From "Believe Me: A Memoir Of Love Death And Jazz Chickens" By Eddie Izzard

1
I had the luxury of knowing what I wanted to do. So I just sat on the bed and came up with a plan for myself:" I have to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. But I don't have the confidence to do a production there because I've never gone before, and I don't even know how to get there or what to do once I get there. So I will just act as if I do have the confidence to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I'll just borrow confidence from a future version of myself. Once I've been to the Edinburgh Fringe and performed a show there, then I will have the confidence to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I will go to the bank manager of confidence (in some part of my brain) and I will borrow that confidence from the future, and then I can wear it like a cloak, and I will talk to everyone with this confidence." It was out there as a concept, but it worked. . Eddie Izzard
2
It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized you could buy a packet of cereal with a free gift and then just stick your hand in and root around in the packet until you found the free thing. It seems a much simpler way. But that took me about fifteen years to work out. Eddie Izzard
3
If you are an LGBT+ person and you come out, you have to go through your knight’s quest to create ground for yourself, to create a space for yourself, to stand there and say, “I exist. I have no reason to feel guilt or shame. I am proud to exist, and while I’m not perfect, I deserve to exist in society just like anyone else.” This became my first big fight. While I consider myself to be fantastically boring, I realized that if I took on my own sexual identity and came out and just told people about it and tried to have a chat with them–tried to be offhand and casual about it–and tried to build our place in society and humanity, then that would be a good mission. This is where I exist in society. I am just this guy. I am transgender, and I exist. But that is just my sexuality. More important than that is that I perform comedy, I perform drama, I run marathons, and I’m an activist in politics. These are the things I do. How you self-identify with your sexuality matters not one wit. What you do in life–what you do to add to the human existence–that is what matters. That is the beautiful thing. . Eddie Izzard