Jenny Slate Quotes

The one thing I will never do is become pigeonholed.

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.'

You know, we have our own audience, and it's not like - they just know we're not going to do certain things.

I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.

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.

As a performer, the thing you want the most is to be your authentic self.

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.

I'm just trying to be myself - make music how I make music.

What's the point of rap if you can't be yourself, huh?

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

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.

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.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

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.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.

The records are black boxes for me. Like, if you want to know who I am, my views, my perspective, things I love, things I hate, my convictions, my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.

I'm American. I'm eclectic. I'm going to follow my musical passions. And if people don't like it, and it hurts my legacy, I'm not going to worry about that.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

You rarely, in the professional world, have the chance to express yourself as an individual.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run.

I've never... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world.

Some people say I'm conscious, some say I'm a gangsta rapper - it's just me doing me. I'm stomping in my own lane. I'm doing what I do.

In school, I learned about artists and how they were free to express themselves. I was allergic to conformity, and the lifestyle attracted me. I wanted to express myself in a way that slammed people up against the wall.