Ne-Yo Quotes

People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone's vision, because in the end, that's what you got: your clay in someone else's hands.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

If you try to follow everyone else's mold, you'll probably fail at some point because God created us uniquely for a reason.

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

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.

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.

He who fears to be out of the mode does not deserve to belong to himself.

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.'

In the first two years of my career, there were a lot of restraints on what I could do. I couldn't wear certain colors of lipstick, like bright pink, dark pink or red; [my lips] had to be natural. Eventually, I stopped communicating with certain people at the label, and did exactly what I wanted to do. And that was to cut my hair, dye it black, change my clothes, change my sound. Really to just express myself.

Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.

I just wanted to be who I was, which was like so many other girls I knew. We grew up in the city, had a hard edge and obstacles to overcome, but we were still young and beautiful. I didn't want to be all dressed up, all made up - I wanted to be myself, which hadn't been done before.

At the Harvard Business School, I really felt I had gained the ability to resolve difficult issues. But I also felt that I wasn't in the mainstream with my fellow students. During job-hunting season, for example, everybody shaved their beards for interviews. I thought, 'This is crazy.' So I grew a beard.

When you know who you are, you know who you are. That's the real dangerous thing in Hollywood, because they all want to create you and mold you.

I always write the pieces I want to write.

A tattoo doesn't make you look like an individual.

If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.

Personally, I feel that in my own work I wanted to look programmed or impersonal but I don't really believe I am being impersonal when I do it. And I don't think you could do this.

As soon as something becomes 'trendy,' I go off it. I hate the idea of being a sheep and just following a look because I've been told it's fashionable. Individuality makes the world a much more interesting place.

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.

Just as I never liked bumper stickers - even though I do brake for animals, and if I had a kid, she would definitely be an honor student - I don't like the idea of expressing my views through social-media-controlled rainbow-or-anything-else-ification.

The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.

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 try so hard to be true to myself. I hope I can help other girls realize that they don't have to do things just because everyone else is doing them.

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

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.