Karl Lagerfeld Quotes

As far back as I can remember, I had an interest in fashion. I used to go to sleepaway camp, and they'd provide a list of things that you had to bring, and I always wanted to be a bit more creative than the list allowed. Like, if they required chinos, I wanted to hand-paint them.

If you paint a picture and I paint a picture, we each want to do it our own way. And we'll stand or fall on whatever we did.

I was so big, so I had to always come up with my own creations. Like, when I would do junior prom and stuff, I would have stuff specially made or added to my outfit. I definitely was always into trying to do something a little over and beyond.

I feel like I'm just trying to pave my own lane and just kind of make my own sound.

All our forms are unique - movies, music and literature - and you have to leave the person who is doing it to do their best.

You can’t learn your craft by copying me or anyone else. I hope what I do can do is in some way inspire others but I would be appalled if I thought my work was being studied as ‘the right way to do the job’. My way is just one of an infinite number of ways to do the job.

Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

I didn't take inspiration from other photographers, which in a way helped to find my own images.

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.

Imitation always stinks. When I take photos, I don't go back. I don't look at the past. I'm always original.

If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity - every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself.

Everybody is completely different. I think there is no formula for filmmaking. Everybody finds their own way of doing things.

I've never been in style, so I can't go out of style.

Through care taken over trends, the desire to be novel and affectation knowledge, we repudiate our art, our instinct, our own way of doing things; it is absurd and stupid

I am an artist who's just tryin' to do something different, and basically not caring about everybody's opinions and wanting to follow what everybody else is doing. At the same time, I know when to be serious, but I know when to joke.

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

I believe that the only excuse we have for being musicians and for making music in any fashion, is to make it differently, to perform it differently, to establish the music's difference, vis-a-vis our own difference.

Write it as it is, don't try to make it like this or that. You can't do it in anybody else's way-you will have to make a way of your own.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

Good or bad, the one thing I can say about my art is, if I can quote Sinatra, I did it my way.

People are imitative and imitation is bound to be unintelligent. They want to do exactly the things which others are doing. That destroys their freshness. Do things in your own style; live your life according to your own light. And even if the same situation arises, be alert to find a new response. It is only a question of a little alertness, and once you have started enjoying... and it is really a great joy to respond to old situations always in a new way, because that newness keeps you young, keeps you conscious, keeps you non-mechanical, keeps you alive.

Bring something incomprehensible into the world!

Thankfully I have a fan base that wants to see me, so I really enjoy creating music that is different.

Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.