Charli XCX Quotes

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.'

Metallica lives in a little bubble. We just do our own thing. We're not part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all the time. It's a great luxury. I don't think we were really appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps us alive. It's great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to piss our managers off.

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 couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

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.

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

I just don't like to do a lot of the normal things expected of other artists. I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just trying to stick with what it is I want to do.

I think it's so important as an actor that you hang on to your own inner compass, because so many people want to guide you - 'This is what you should you be doing'. But I want to do different things.

I never wanted to be a feature - that was never the goal with my music. I didn't want to just live through other people's work.

I've had a lot of voices tell me what I should be making. Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn't allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

I don't do any art to please any people.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

When I was working for WWE I felt like I was trying to make someone else's vision happen instead of my own. And I think that's where I became less true to myself and I think it showed in my work.

I've never conformed to what my record label has said and, yes, that has meant that it's been a long journey for me.

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

I think you should never be forced to be nice as an artist. An artist has to be uncomfortable in a way. Narcissistic and uncomfortable.

Basically I just had to say, 'Screw everyone around me - from now on I'm just gonna play what I think is important to me and our music.' So I gave the big finger to all the current trends in technical wizardry, and just went off and did what I felt was best for the songs.

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it.

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.

You can't write something to please someone.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

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