Kiki Smith Quotes

It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'

[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.

Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

You want to make decisions that are meaningful to you, and that are going to continue to enhance you being who you really are and what your message to the world is, and everybody has one. The real important thing is to know what that message is and how you want to carry that forward.

Even if you tried to extinguish your personality, what is left in the story will reflect it, perhaps by its negation. Our lives provide the bricks from which we build these cathedrals.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

I want to be remembered as somebody that tried to respect her integrity as an artist and as a person. And I don't want to be in any box. I don't want to be one thing.

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

The whole point in developing your own style is to find your own voice.

My interest lies in my self-expression - what's inside of me - not what I'm in.

Everybody has their own way of tapping into their realness.

You have to understand your own personal DNA. Don't do things because I do them or Steve Jobs or Mark Cuban tried it. You need to know your personal brand and stay true to it.

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that's always existed.

Directors tell me what to do, and I kind of just put my own twist to it, just to get inside my personality that everybody doesn't really get to see - my off-the-court interests and the way I act. It's just me.

Everyone has to decide how they're going to appear in their lives, how they're going to put themselves out there to the world.

I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.

Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction.

I wanted to do things that I knew were going to be me.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I don't do any art to please any people.

I couldn't put into a capsule one thing that represents me, I don't think.

I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.

I grew up in the grunge era. I've always resisted the idea of being part of a machine, wanting just to be an artist in my own right. But at some point, I just realized shutting things out took more energy than just letting it in.

I just like showing people - and this might be at the root of everything that I've done - that I don't want to be looked at as a baseball robot.