A. J. Liebling Quotes

The way to write is well, and how is your own business.

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.

I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way." - Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

I don't care what people do. I don't care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.

I needed freedom to really express myself. That's really what Justified is about.

The freedom of every artist is essential.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

I need someone who understands an artist's mentality. I couldn't be with someone who wouldn't let me have my freedom.

I just love the idea of going into a room and creating something by myself.

I try not to think of myself in any category, and I don't ever really try to imagine myself competing with another actor. I just know I want to do the things that I would want to see, and I know the things that turn me on, whether it's on the stage, or it's a play or a film. I just kind of want to keep doing my own thing.

I liked Amy Winehouse a lot. I liked the way she did what she wanted, and she wasn't fazed about the press being on her back. I loved her songs so much.

Harlem World' is all about me doing my thing.

Atlanta has become and has always been a place where you create your own universe.

No one controlled Frank Sinatra or told him how to sing. No secret group of managers has been telling someone like Jay-Z what to do or how to look. And no one tells me what to do except me and the people who believe in me.

It's my only freedom, music, and I'm not going to give it up to anyone else.

I love photography - I fell in love with photography, I think, because it was my own thing, it wasn't something I needed other people's permission to do. So, it was really freeing for me actually to be able to not be a famous person and just to take pictures.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

I've read horoscopes before and what they say. But I would actually love to not be what somebody writes down - I don't want to be described. I don't want you to be able to read something and say, "This is how Wayne is." I'd rather you meet me and decide. I'd rather be different, basically.

I've lived a life that's full, I traveled each and ev'ry highway, And more, much more than this, I did it my way.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us.

The difference of human being behind the guy on the page is in writing, I'm no longer conscious of personal repercussions because for that moment they don't exist. At times, I tell myself, Well, I can always go back and change that or take it out, and I find out that I rarely do. Couple little things here and there: Do unto others. Be a good scout. With all the ironies that entails, I go by that. That's a good way to live.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

Don't ever let anyone else write your story for you.

Let me live my life the way I want to.