Kehinde Wiley Quotes

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.

I’ve always thought that each person invented himself… that we are each a figment of our own imagination. And some people have a greater ability to imagine than others.

I think that I do separate myself a fair amount. And I don't feel like I am representing women. That's up to however people interpret it once they sort of see it.

If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be.

You are the imagination of yourself.

I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

Originality houses many rooms, and the views from the windows are all different.

People can call you many different things, but you are not what people call you. You are what you answer to.

Let's all be different same as me.

Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.

I've never, ever labeled myself.

I don't have a set image. In fact, I would be curious to know how someone slots me.

I've always been creative, I think.

I'm a lot more creative than people can imagine.

I am a person. I am not a soap opera.

You see a person when you look in the mirror that no one sees but you. Other people see a person when they look at you, but you're not that person, either.

I don't know whether I can call myself a visionary.

In school, I really felt like I didn't fit a type. I think everybody had a hard time putting me in a category. They all sort of realized, 'Hmm, you don't really look like a soprano. You're not really a character belter.'

The reality is our story and the way we love and our taste in clothing and everything else. And what we ambitiously feel we can be.

I think every person is so unique. I think every woman is so unique, every man is so unique, every artist is so unique.

A lot of people think I'm going to be like someone who's stepped out of one of his own cartoons. And maybe I am. But I sure have a hard time analyzing it.

I think I see myself differently than most people see me.

I don't feel as if I'm typecast - like any writer, the difficulty is that one facet of my identity becomes louder, obscuring the fact that I'm also a woman, a writer, a lover of pop culture and other things.