James Blunt Quotes

I don't ever want to be a person that I'm not. A lot of girls fall into the trap where they are trying to impress other people, and that's the time when they lose themselves.

I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.

As long as I can remember, I saw myself as black. I was socially conditioned to discard that. It was an all-white town. I was very unhappy. I felt like I was constantly self-sabotaging in order to conform to religion, culture dynamics. I was censoring myself. I was shutting down inside.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

Write the poem only you can write.

What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.

What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.

There's a constant anxiety that comes from having an innate sense of self, yet existing within a homogenised, aspirational culture.

I was very pushed to look a certain way and act a certain way, and it wasn't me, but I played by their rules to get my foot in the door.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

I don't really have a gimmick or a 'thing.' I'm one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people's perceptions are.

I want to be able to wake up and feel like, 'Eh, I feel like wearing this!' Or talking to that person. It's so much more work to have to stay in that box to fit in, 'Mean Girls' style.

Everyone is being told by society to talk this way, to dress that way, to be this person or to be that person, and it's so important to just maintain a sense of self.

The reason I write is because I have questions. What I don't want is for people to forget that I'm a novelist and think I'm a sociologist or something. I don't want to feel trapped into a corner where I don't belong.

A lot of Asian girls love being basic because it's safe. But the thing is, a lot of my fans are those girls, and they want to be bolder, but there's no one they could look up to and be like, 'It's OK to be that way.'

If I couldn't get to where I wanted to by being my organic self - which is a smart, funny, unapologetically black woman - then I felt like it's not worth doing it if I can't do it the most organic way possible. Which is why I left the music business.

Being an artist and a human in this world always means confronting people who make you feel like you have to act according to their rules.

You can filter certain stuff - it depends what artist you are - but you're never going to be true to yourself if you're worried about what other people think.

We shouldn't censor ourselves based on the weak idea of "looking cool." It's such a waste of potential awesomeness.

I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.