Michael Bastian Quotes

You'll get a kid in Liberia wearing a Tupac T-shirt, and for us, that's zef. People try to say it's like trash, but it's not really trash. It's putting things together you think are cool.

It's my job, too, to keep up with pop culture and what the kids are into 'cause you don't want to sound like an old man trying to write for kids. I spend a lot of my time spying on them.

It's a great story. It's available for anyone else who wants to try it. We're not brilliant. We're not unbelievable. We're just two people who hit a nerve. I think it can be done again and again and again. More people should try it.

There are people we look up to, like Lady Gaga and what she's built. She's not afraid to own who she is.

The best fashion show is definitely on the street. Always has been, and always will be.

I don't look to celebrities for style anymore because I've learned the chain of command. They are being dressed by a stylist who's getting inspiration from a 16-year-old kid running the streets of Melbourne, Australia. Once I learned that chain of command, I just started taking it to the streets.

One day I had an instinct to put on a kaftan and go out and sing. People liked it out of the blue. An artist should be instinctive.

You have to be as original as possible. It's a tough thing to come up with something totally original.

I am always updating and coming up with something fresh, whether it's a colour, a trend, or a design, as my uncle always taught me to be unique and different.

People, when they say 'streetwear,' they miss the central component, which is that it's real people; it's clothes that are worn on the street.

The ability to look at certain patterns with regards to urban fashion, with regards to swagger, with regards to cultural hegemony, with regards to the ways in which young people look at resistance culture as a pattern that should be mimicked and admired.

Of course designers inspired me, but I was more inspired by everyday people. People that I see walking down the street.

All the girls walk by dressed up for each other, and the boys do the boogie woogie on the corner of the street.

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before.

Some days I have a knot in my stomach because I've got to sit down and come up with something in womenswear that no one else came up with.

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

An imitation may be quite successful in its own way, but imitation can never be Success. Success is a first-hand creation.

The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart. You just have to open up your heart and not be afraid to get them out.

Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.

The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.

If it's not there in fashion, fantasize it.

No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.

A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

We live in a world of empty spectacle, the world of spectacle rock, songs you can't remember, it's all about the expression of money, power and kind of empty and fascistic. Where technology has changed society, where people are not using their brains as much, not seeing the bigger picture but constantly looking down at the cellphone and not seeing the bigger picture. Today's songwriter need to be on outside, find their own trip if you will and find a way to connect from a place that no one has heard before. It might be taken as weird but that is what makes it unique.