Will Self Quotes

I never think about what others are doing. I do a film for myself, not others.

When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.

I always wanna be able to fight, I always wanna be able to go left when they tell me to go right, not because I'm being hard-headed, it's just me taking a creative stance. I have no problem with constructive criticism, but, at the same time, I have a problem with doin' the same thing that everybody's doin'. And that's the way I've found a way to survive in the music game.

I remember when I was in art classes, I hated following the assignments. And I would get in trouble for doing something totally different or taking it in a weird direction.

I think, as an artist, part of your job is being aware of what's going on around you and not selling out and not following the trend, which I'm totally against.

I don't care what people do. I don't care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

I'm so proud to be on a Kate Bush record; she's always marched to the beat of her own drum.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

Willie Nelson is the perfect person, it seems to me, to think about. Because something tells me that he operates on his own frequency.

I'm part of the fashion system, but I don't want to follow all the rules. I don't want to be contrarian - I just want to do my own things, which are most honest and correct to do.

If you're creating anything at all, it's really dangerous to care about what people think.

If people like something you've done - or don't like it - this shouldn't determine what you write or how you write it. Those are two separate things entirely: your work and the world's response to it.

If you think about what everyone else will think, you forget to just make music.

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

I don't get my ideas from reading other people.

You can filter certain stuff - it depends what artist you are - but you're never going to be true to yourself if you're worried about what other people think.

It is impossible to be a maverick or a true original if you're too well behaved and don't want to break the rules. You have to think outside the box. That's what I believe. After all, what is the point of being on this earth if all you want to do is be liked by everyone and avoid trouble?

The right creative act makes its own laws, and always will do.

Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

I don't chase what everyone else is looking for. Being creative is all about you.

Do the thing itself. Don’t pay much mind to critics or what anyone says about it. Just do it, in any form possible, and watch others doing it. Take it in viscerally, get it by osmosis. Don’t ever read your own reviews, certainly not the good ones.