Neil Gaiman Quotes

It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.

To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that 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.

Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, 'It sounds just like you.' But it sounds just like me after I've made it sound like me.

To me, what makes an artist is a unique personality that they're not afraid to let show.

I'm now able to show who I am as an artist.

That's the thing about creating. When you create, you create your own thing, whatever that is. It's always going to seep through in whatever you do.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.

I didn't want to imitate anybody. Any movement I knew, I didn't want to use.

For a guy who didn't expect a fan base whatsoever, I'm pretty stoked. People say they don't understand it, and I say that's okay. I don't think anyone can argue that I'm not trying to do my own thing at least.

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.

Everyone has their own sound, and if you're heard enough, folks will come to recognize it. Style however, is a different thing. Try to express your own ideas. It's much more difficult to do, but the rewards are there if you're good enough to pull it off.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice.

I think a lot of singer-songwriters get compared to each other, but I'd like to think that what I'm doing is special and specific to me.

I never wanted to be that fad type of artist. When I looked up to artists, watching TV, I wanted to see somebody. I wanted to touch that person. I wanted to sound like them. I wanted to move like them. That' s what I want my fans to do. So that's why, everything that I do, the music I make, how I dress, it's all based off my lifestyle.

Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.

I can only be me. I have a hard time being a chameleon as a singer.

Any kind of creativity is not settling down into a happy little space. I don't try to be mellow or anything. I think I have quite... my voice is what it is, no matter what I'm singing, it's always going to sound like me. There's not too far I could go. I sound like myself. I hope that I haven't put any boundaries on anything.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It's an individual-feel thing, you know?

The main thing in making your own music is that it's an expression of someone's personality and being. That's what people want to hear, and you can't really teach that - that's just something that comes out. Teaching just hones that.

I have many musical inspirations, but I would really love to just be me. My very own artist.