Duke Ellington Quotes

Just be true to yourself, and listen as much as one is able to to other people whose opinions you respect and look up to but in the end it has to come from you. You can’t really worry too much by looking to the left and the right about what the competition is doing or what other people in your field are doing. It has to be a true vision.

Don't try to guess what it is people want and give it to them. Don't ask for a show of hands. Try your best to write what you like, what you think your friends would like and what you think your father would like and then cross your fingers... The most valuable thing you have is your own voice.

You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own.

Be true to yourself. Establish your own style and stick to it.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

I've never really tried to copy anyone; I like to have my own style.

I would say trust your own judgment and develop your own style that is true in your heart and don't be deterred from that. Just develop that something that's unique to you that you feel you can give. Be true to yourself, trust your own judgment; that's all.

Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you're doing. If you're not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.

I couldn't imitate anyone if I wanted to.

The fact that I have been successful merely means that I can write and illustrate in my own way.

Stay true to your own voice, and don't worry about needing to be liked or what anybody else thinks. Keep your eyes on your own paper.

I have my own thing going on; I don't want to imitate anyone else.

I am very much my own person and my own artist.

In the era we came up in, you had to have your own thing.

What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn't change what I decide to do. I don't choose projects so people don't see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system.

I'd rather sink with my own vision than float with somebody else's.

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

We didn't think about it but we never wanted to sound like anybody else.

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.

I think that my father would find it so confusing that people want to imitate him. Not because he didn't have confidence in who he was, but because he never imitated anybody. He was his own person.

Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.

I always took a great deal of pride in being original.

Don't try to write to the trend of the moment.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.