Vivienne Westwood Quotes

I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

The thing is: Yes, I'm white and yes, I love African music, and I can't do anything about it.

I grew up influenced by different cultures, sounds, feelings, emotions, and I want Premiere Classe to be a representation of that.

There isn't only one way that black art or entertainment is represented, and that's the most important thing. We're permeating every style. We're claiming and, when necessary, appropriating all kinds of forms. Nothing is forbidden, because it's not what black people do: because it's not what we think of as black art.

Me being in Houston, I wanted to leave there because it was only known for one thing. That's why I hit N.Y.; that's why I hit L.A. That's why I hit Paris, London. I just picked up basically everything, but I morphed it into what Travi$ Scott is and into what I know is fresh.

You know, I really feel a responsibility to the music, and I teach workshops in music sometimes. And folks do come to me and they go, 'How do I make this blues song my own? How do I feel like I'm not an impostor doing this?' And I'm like, 'That's an excellent question.' That's where you should start, where you go, 'How does this speak to me?'

Life, religion and art all converge in Bali. They have no word in their language for 'artist' or 'art.' Everyone is an artist.

My cubist paintings are my most Mexican.

I just went to Europe, spent a year traveling, and then I came home with a finished album and said, "Hey everyone I'm back!" I gave everyone their lighters from Luxembourg, gave them the postcards from Italy and Rome, then said, "Hey look, I made a record, too" and played it for them. The general reaction was shock, because it was so different from what they've known me to do.

I've written and translated my own poems from English to German. It's basically a summation of my identity as it stands now.

I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.

There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters.

How will I be remembered? As a technician or artist? As a humorist or a visionary?

Brancusi has his medium: Picasso, Faulkner, Shostakovich, theirs. Mine happens to be cloth.

Every movie that I've done, they don't stand independently from one another because a little bit of me is in every single one of those, and it's part of my own personal growth.

I don't like myself very much as a person, but I'm proud of what I create.

As an artist, I identify with Sandro Botticelli. We know him as the man who painted Primavera and The Birth Of Venus. The goddesses and ancient subjects he chose represented virtues which were meant to inspire people. Then he went through a dark phase when he was listening to the sermons of Savonarola, who preached against the worldly pleasures of the Renaissance. But Botticelli's works live on, inspiring people to this day. Five hundred years after his death, he still has thousands of fans!

I want to be just a musician and songwriter, and hopefully known as a very good one. I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.

When I discovered that I could write music, it felt like the most natural way for me to connect with people and tell my stories. I've always thought of that as what I do: I tell stories.

What happens if you start drawing squares? Well, I'd say the answer to that is, don't get famous for drawing circles.

Something in me knows where I’m going, and - well, painting is a state of being. ... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

The only reason I became a writer was so I could exist on a piece of paper.

I often think people don't know what to think of me, and in fact this is precisely the objective of many of my creations. Even back in the days with Lady Starlight, my original partner, we aimed to bemuse. This feeling of bemusement - it's neither good nor bad. It just is. Whether critics realize it or not, they've been in a very long argument since my public birth.

Artists are those who can evade the verbose.