Mario Testino Quotes

Perfectionism is boring and doesn't exist-to strive for it makes you uninteresting.

To me, searching for perfection isn't anywhere near as interesting as trying to find your own voice.

The paradox of perfection is that you should try and achieve it by doing quality work even though you know you can never achieve it.

Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

There's a large opportunity for Bon Iver to be a special thing, even from a business standpoint - just trying to do cooler things. Every band sells t-shirts and plays certain auditoriums, but I'm sick of being like everyone else, because I'm not.

I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew I could only do that a few times before I was in danger of repeating myself.

I think that all my albums are different enough where I don't feel like I did this the last time.

The businessman says 'If I don't do it first, somebody else will.' The artist says 'If I don't do it first, nobody else will.'

I think the key to great art and great artists is to just fully be yourself and not be scared of that, and be the extremes of your personality. Show the extremes of your personality and embrace the imperfections. Embrace the things about yourself that you might not like.

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

No age is compelled to take its beauty from preceding epochs.

Mainstream to me equals boring, so I don't want to be doing that.

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

I'm into emulation, not imitation.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

Always be different; don't follow the rules. Don't do what anyone tells you. Don't use the same sounds as people; don't use the same drums as people.

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.

Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out.

People don't want just vanilla. They want 31 flavors. I couldn't do what Rihanna does. I couldn't do what Gaga does. They can't do what I do.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

It's not about perfection. What's a perfect painting? What's interesting about a perfect painting?

If you strive toward the perfect run, accepting that you will always come up short of that is very intriguing. It makes me think about how in life in general, we always want to strive toward perfection, but sometimes perfection would be the worst thing.