"So I'm not worried about the emotions I carry with me, because I'm happy that I have them; I think it's good for the work I do. The emotions that are not healthy are the ones you hold inside, like anger"
About this Quote
Then she makes the key cultural bargain explicit: emotions are “good for the work I do.” Coming from a performer whose career spans Motown polish, crossover stardom, and decades of public scrutiny, the subtext is practical. Pop stardom demands vulnerability on cue, night after night, while keeping your private life camera-ready. Ross suggests the trick isn’t to become numb; it’s to metabolize feeling into performance rather than letting it calcify into something corrosive.
Her sharpest line is the distinction between carried emotions and hidden ones. “Hold inside, like anger” isn’t a self-help cliché here; it’s a diagnosis of celebrity survival. Anger is the emotion women are trained to suppress because it threatens likability and control. By calling it “not healthy,” she’s not condemning anger itself so much as the forced containment of it - the pressure to smile through insult, racism, misogyny, bad contracts, the constant appraisal.
The intent reads as permission and warning at once: feel fully, use it, don’t let it rot in you. It’s a performer’s ethic that doubles as a politics of self-preservation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anger |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ross, Diana. (2026, January 17). So I'm not worried about the emotions I carry with me, because I'm happy that I have them; I think it's good for the work I do. The emotions that are not healthy are the ones you hold inside, like anger. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/so-im-not-worried-about-the-emotions-i-carry-with-52741/
Chicago Style
Ross, Diana. "So I'm not worried about the emotions I carry with me, because I'm happy that I have them; I think it's good for the work I do. The emotions that are not healthy are the ones you hold inside, like anger." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/so-im-not-worried-about-the-emotions-i-carry-with-52741/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"So I'm not worried about the emotions I carry with me, because I'm happy that I have them; I think it's good for the work I do. The emotions that are not healthy are the ones you hold inside, like anger." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/so-im-not-worried-about-the-emotions-i-carry-with-52741/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.







