Paul Westerberg Quotes

My music is the most 'me' thing about me. Everything is in my music.

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

The most important thing for me as an artist is having an identity.

People choose whatever projects they've seen that I've done over the years, and whichever one is their favorite is the only one they care about. But I realized that none of those were my voice or representative of what my thoughts and feelings were.

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'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.

Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.

Find your own specific voice in filmmaking and go for it. Either people will get it or they won't and that's what it's all about.

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

I wanted to come through with my own voice and, hopefully, have it affect people. I want people to know that I'm not an Elvis impersonator.

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 feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.

I don't believe in reducing a style and a voice down to a set of descriptions, so I've never done that.

Being in a group, you don't really get to give an ounce of who you are as a solo artist.

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.

The worst frame of mind to be in is what the fans like or what the fans want, because then you lose the authenticity of who you are as an artist and who you are as a person.

I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught - not like what I had seen - shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say the things that were my own.

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.'

Skateboarding is as much, or more, an art of mode of expression than it is a sport. What skateboarding has given me is precisely that: a form of expression that drew me to it, and, in so doing, I was able to express and be who I wanted to be through it, in a sense.

I think it's really important to make things your own in your voice. I started when I was 23, and in the beginning of my career, there was this expectation of a young designer being edgier, cooler, more downtown. But I was never that person.

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

My work is trying to at least define myself on my own terms, and then if other people enjoy things that's a lovely addition.

Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don't worry about whether you're "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

The fact is ones own voice is not heard anywhere else. Its a challenge to be yourself. It takes a lot of courage.

If I was singing like somebody else, then it was almost like I was expressing myself like somebody else. So it was always a very original thing for me. It's my voice, it's my diary, it's the way I connect with people.