Andre Gide Quotes

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Finally and most important of all, authenticity means that you must do what you do the way you do it and allow everyone else the same courtesy. There was a time I wanted to be like every famous writer that ever lived. I tried to copy styles, reframe information, use similar artwork. I almost drove myself crazy! Now I just do what I do. I have mentors. There are people whose work I admire, but I write the way I write. I eat the way I eat. I dress the way I dress. I can't believe that God made us each so unique only to have us do everything the same way.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

Don't try to guess what it is people want and give it to them. Don't ask for a show of hands. Try your best to write what you like, what you think your friends would like and what you think your father would like and then cross your fingers... The most valuable thing you have is your own voice.

My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.

I never wanted to be like anyone growing up. It's always been about the enjoyment, and I've just never wanted to imitate anyone.

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.

You've got to be oblivious to other people, the push and pull of other people's opinions, the way other people measure success. It's then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things.

Each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation.

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

I've learnt that I've had the best results from just trying to be me, trying to make a movie or TV show I want to see or write a script I want to read, and that's really all I can offer - being authentic.

Don't try to write to the trend of the moment.

I've never really tried to copy anyone; I like to have my own style.

Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision.

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

My style is all to myself.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.

Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's work.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'