Justin Townes Earle Quotes

This world has a way of trying to homogenize you. Trying to sanitize you. Trying to scrub you of your unique divine genius. This world wants to make you regular.

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

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

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'd just like to inspire people to be themselves and do what they want and not conform to the rigid guidelines of the music or entertainment business.

Both my parents are artists, so that just makes me look at everything slightly different. I listened to different music; I dressed differently. So I kind of grew up without following the pack.

We live in world that wants to burnish the rough edges and straighten the crooked line, but conformity doesn't beget greatness.

For all the oddballs and misfits out there, eventually, if you just follow your path, you will reach somewhere no one else has. You are uniquely meant to do something that only you can do.

You can't put me in a box, because then it's just like, you're not gonna get anything.

Someone was always trying to put down my individuality and personality, making me sing Mozart arias that were nothing to do with me.

Express who you are in a world where everyone is the same.

Holding on to some of your uniqueness is the trick instead of surrendering it at the Academy of Contemporary We're Gonna Make You a Star.

I feel like I've given up a lot of my fantasies. I just want to do things differently, and to a lot of people that's annoying. I like weird stuff. I always hoped if we had a big success it would be on our own terms.

The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.

The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there's this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, 'Well, you say I'm a pop star, so maybe that's not true.'

When you're young, you don't feel iconoclastic - you're just kind of doing what seems natural, what moves you.

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

People relate to the spirit of the band, which is to live your way and succeed on your own terms. There's no hypocrisy in being successful and still railing against conformity.

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

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.

When you're just like everybody else, you've nothing to offer other than your conformity.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Everybody has their own style. If you went to the movies every week and everybody acted the same way Tom Cruise did, boy, wouldn't that suck?

Now I'm old... maybe I'm still an eccentric hippie. There's a wonderful freedom in the eccentricity - you can go places, you can be wacky, and you don't have to be constrained. I think that's why people are eccentric - eccentricity is a weapon... and it's great!

Where's your will to be weird?