Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.

Individuality realized is the supreme attainment of the human soul, the master-master's work of art. Individuality is sacred.

Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and flouts all predictions. In the work of art, he finds his uniqueness confirmed.

The individual - man as a man, man as a brain, if you like - interests me more than what he makes because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

The reason I put make-up on or wear the costume is to try and find my own style. It's like my guitar style - I'm just trying to be an original artist.

I think I'm just doing me, my music, my shows, and my stories.

It takes a great deal of courage and independence to decide to design your own image instead of the one that society rewards, but it gets easier as you go along.

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

Express yourself through your art - whether it’s your drawings in a sketchpad, tattoos on your skin, the shade of your lipstick, or the clothes that you wear.

Just as cherry, plum, peach and damson blossoms all possess their own unique qualities, each person is unique. We cannot become someone else. The important thing is that we live true to ourselves and cause the great flower of our lives to blossom.

A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself -- or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind. You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.

Your life is your art.

There is no recipe for success - it is as unique as you are

Lifestyle is the art of discovering ways to live uniquely.

You are the artist and the art.

Our life is a work of art. We must seek always to be its artist.

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.

Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

Even if you tried to extinguish your personality, what is left in the story will reflect it, perhaps by its negation. Our lives provide the bricks from which we build these cathedrals.

You are both a work of art and an artist at work.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did and I'd say, well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical - but that makes no sense to anyone. Now I say I just write my own songs. I thought I had to help people get me, but I don't think they need to be spoon-fed. If you connect with me that is cool. I don't need the whole world to feel like I am a soul angel.

When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.

From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.

The reality is, I like imperfection. You take away from the world when you're not yourself. Whatever is unique and special about you was designed by God. And when you try to be someone else, we don't get you. Who knows what you would have contributed to the world had you just been yourself, if you had just celebrated who you are and just walked boldly?