Andre Gide Quotes

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

I get that there is no one quite like me, nor should there be anybody quite like anybody else in any field. I've always said, 'Don't be the next anyone; be the first you.'

Write about what makes you different.

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

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.

Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

No age is compelled to take its beauty from preceding epochs.

My style is all to myself.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

The reason I put make-up on or wear the costume is to try and find my own style. It's like my guitar style - I'm just trying to be an original artist.

Everybody is different. Everybody has different styles. Just do it the best way you know how.

If you want to be original just try being yourself, because God has never made two people exactly alike.

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.

I feel like I want to keep moving toward idiosyncracy. Personal, personal, personal.

I take a little bit from everybody and add that to my life to make me, me. I wanna be nobody else but Future. When you look at me, I want you to say, 'Future.' The way I talk, the way I dress, there's nobody in the world but me.

To me, searching for perfection isn't anywhere near as interesting as trying to find your own voice.

Everyone should pursue whatever is original in oneself. That's the way for a long life in music.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

Everything I do is me. I don't like taking ideas from people unless they're the G.O.A.T.

Find your own style, whatever it is. Whatever is inside you, bring that out. I think that's when you have something unique.

Like the greats, you want to make your own story yourself, and not be a copy of another.

I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own.

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

Individuality is that which you bring into the world.

To live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation.