Vijay Sethupathi 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.'

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

I want to be my own artist and reflect my creativity.. I don't want to be turned into a pop princess; that's not who I am.

Comedy has allowed me to be my 100-percent-true self, as opposed to other places, where I feel like that's been a hindrance. Whether it's music or poetry or hosting, people want you to be something else: they want you to be packaged in a certain way.

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.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

There's no way to describe what I do. It's just me.

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

I don't want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself. I want to avoid becoming too styled and too 'done' and too generic. You see people as they go through their career, and they just become more and more like everyone else.

The only way I was going to be funny was if I was myself, and either you liked it, or you didn't. Either you got on my train, or you didn't. Freeing myself of this idea that I had to fit a certain mold was when I was able to be my funniest.

Somebody once told me I shouldn't try to change Hollywood. That isn't my point at all. I don't want Hollywood to change me.

I'd been so heavily influenced by Em, but artists that don't grow out of that don't go anywhere. Ultimately, I came to understand that what Eminem stood for above all else was 'be yourself.'

We're starting to push the envelope in terms of the expectations, and you can also have your own style, personality and sense of humor, because now we're allowed to.

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

In my personal life, I have always been bold, from the clothes I wear to how I talk. For me, boldness does not necessarily mean stripping. I think people have wrong notion about boldness. For me, bold is being different.

I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody.

I want to be an artist you cannot categorize at all. You can't put a box around me. You can't put anything around me.

Art school had taught me it was far better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.

In my movies, I'm not trying to erase any old image of myself, really. And also I'm not trying to imitate anyone or follow in their footsteps, because I know, Burt Reynolds was just one of the people that told me this, I know how you can only last in this business if you got something special to offer, just by being yourself.

I'm rebelling against being handed a career, like, 'You're the next this; you're the next that.' I'm not the next anything, I'm the first me. I can't be myself, I can't just be Idris Elba. But that's just the nature of the business.

I'm not trying to stay in the same place and I'm not trying to compete with what's currently in fashion. That would be dishonest. But, at the same time, I'm different and the music reflects that to some degree.

People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

I have my own voice and can focus only on that. I know what I like; I find my inspirations in so many other places than just online and bring that into my work.

My style is ambiguous and lucid. I wish to be signified but not summed up. I don't want to have to go over the top each time.

I didn't think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody - I didn't think it described me very well and I didn't think it had anything to do with my music.