Montesquieu Quotes

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

Don't be pretentious is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem - just because you're getting an MFA doesn't mean you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words - words are your friends.

No one is a plain white room. I hate going into a home that is done to the nines but has nothing do with the homeowner - no knickknacks, no art that has anything to say about the person who lives there.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

I always try to find things worth saying, things that are supposed to be said instead of being contrived. I do a ton of writing.

Fashion and style are a language - they helps us communicate with each other in a creative way. Style is one of the most important methods of self-expression.

I am not at all stylish. For me, style is a state of mind and individuality.

A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

Style is to forget all styles.

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.

Originality is a quality that cannot be imitated. The technique of the language, on the other hand, is something that belongs to all who can understand it.

Finally and most important of all, authenticity means that you must do what you do the way you do it and allow everyone else the same courtesy. There was a time I wanted to be like every famous writer that ever lived. I tried to copy styles, reframe information, use similar artwork. I almost drove myself crazy! Now I just do what I do. I have mentors. There are people whose work I admire, but I write the way I write. I eat the way I eat. I dress the way I dress. I can't believe that God made us each so unique only to have us do everything the same way.

I feel like there's no real innovation in having some music. It's more just unique personalities and unique expressions, and you being able to tell your story.

If you write with passion in your own style, you will make a place for yourself

Fashion says 'Me too', and style says 'Only me'.

I'm going to work with Dan Clowes. After Charlie Kaufman, it's hard to fill up the gap. It's hard to find somebody who... A lot of writers, I can clearly see the desire of succeeding before the desire of expressing themselves. Sometimes people get upset when you want to be different. You were talking about "whimsical," which is a nice word. But sometimes they use the word "quirky" in the pejorative sense. I get frustrated, because they feel like I'm doing whatever I want, and there is no ground, and I don't really care. They feel it's cynical. But I don't think I have any cynicism in me.

Style is what's there when you look at someone's writing and you know that they wrote it and nobody else did.

I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.

I've been called a stylist until I really could tear my hair out. And I simply don't believe in style. The style is you.

My style is personal, my style of writing is personal, and I believe in that. I believe what comes out of me is an individual thing, and that's why I, I believe in the individual.

Style, in the broadest sense of all, is consciousness. More specifically it is a consistent idiom arising spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained.

My style is unique and it's my own. I do not try to copy or imitate anybody.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.

Writing is a form of talking, although writing is such an odd thing in and of itself. People go about it in such different ways.

Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.